CS4: Image blurry at arbitrary zoom levels

[Vega...@adobeforums.com]

Running Vista-64, OpenGL features enabled (and working).
Nvidia 260gtx card with newest drivers (178.24)

Image is rendered sharp at the predefined zoom levels (like 25%/33%/50%/66%).
Then if I zoom to eg 55% the image gets blurry.

Any ideas ?

[dei...@gmail.com]

Photoshop has done this for years. This is nothing new.

[David_...@adobeforums.com]

Same problem with me. I've updated drivers and I have the same issue. Pics just dont look sharp with OpenGL.

I have to say that just like a lot of other users, I'm really disappointed with CS4's performance - its really slow compared to CS3.

[Myle...@adobeforums.com]

No issues here. So once more I can only blame that on the config of your card exposing some oddities or the cards themselves being to new to have been checked out more thoroughly.

Mylenium

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Can`t Adobe just tell us, how we should set up the preferences of our nvidia cards?

[Myle...@adobeforums.com]

Well, Adobe doesn't know your hardware, don't they? ;-) Sorry, this is too much to hope for. From simple things like font sizes to themes to color profiles to screen resolutions there is too much that can affect performance, especially with accelerated functions. I know that some of you are grinding their teeth, but no matter how little you may like it, only trial&error will get you there. In general it is advisable to start with a clean slate and take it from there, meaning to reset all driver settings to their defaults. On my systems that approach always worked and I never had to spend long trying to figure things out. Just have patience...

Mylenium

[Vega...@adobeforums.com]

My setup is as you describe; Driver settings is at default.

I have tried two different (nvidia) cards. The latest one (gtx260) is on the list of tested cards : <http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405711&sliceId=1>

I just wonder how many people must have these kind of problems when you consider that my system is very ordinary.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

Mylenium,
probably you`re right, but aren`t the settings that are available the same at least within one series (for example Geforce 8 series cards etc.)?
I`m talking about fundamental settings like "anisotrop filtering",
"antialiasing-mode", "triple-buffering", "force mipmaps" etc. etc.
To a non-gamer like me those settings are "unknown" and strange. But I could imagine, that there should some recommendations at least for some important fundamental settings. Am I wrong?

[Swo...@adobeforums.com]

Mylenium sorry but...

am cs4 trial user and 4 of my friends too. for example my system amd 6400+ and a gtx 260 and 4 gig of ram an vista x64 sp1. the systems of my friends: xp32 sp3 2 gig ram and a 7950 gx2 , xp32 sp2 2 gig ram and ati 4850 and the last vista32 sp3 gtx380 and 3 gig ram and we ALL do have that strange issue. if we zoom out the pictues gets VERY unsharp - if we zoom in they are sharp....for example..if we zoom out and the picture is unsharp..we klick the window and undock it...the picture becomes sharp...if we leave the mouse button it gets unsharp again...as if a unsharp mask filter renders the windwos...its UGLY...i think i get eye cancer.we tried everything...drivers...old ones..new ones...motherboard drivers...anti antialising settings mapping texturing..everything..NOTHING....i do a LOT of people photography and landscape..with this problems it is not possible for me to zoom out and look at the whole picture and decide if it is good or not..my eyes are beginning to burn after 10 minutes of work and i work on 2 eizos 19". if i turn of opengl this issue is no more but cs4 is verry laggy then and slow...even if i adjust cache and memory settings. when i activate open gl and go to advanced settings and uncheck averything this issue is still happening....VERY unsharp.

so now..my trial is running and cs4 is a disaster so far to me. if this will not be corrected soon or no one can help me i thing i will keep cs3 till cs5 will come.

please help us!

[John_...@adobeforums.com]

I've found that CS4 is also much slower at rendering picture packages.
P4 3 GHz, SATA HDs with dedicated scratch drive, XP32, NVIDIA 8600GT, 2GB RAM --- Photoshop 6.0 was lightning fast compared to CS4!

[john_pa...@adobeforums.com]

Where did you get the CS4 trial version. My information is that Adobe
has not released the trial version yet. It is supposedly going to be out
sometime in mid November. If you got it from some site other than Adobe,
it's is not the release version of CS4 it's most likely a hacked version
of a beta version and can't be expected to run right.

John Passaneau

[Jim_J...@adobeforums.com]

Can`t Adobe just tell us, how we should set up the preferences of our
nvidia cards?

They should. Adobe is breaking new ground by relying on GPUs and they should do as much as they can to take their customers by the hand on this. I'm no idiot when it comes to configuring a GPU and I still often find issues with set up. On one screen I can set one option; on another screen I can undo/over-write that option. I'm sure this can be a messy territory for many.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Where did you get the CS4 trial version.

John, it's possible to download the regular version and just leave it in "trial" mode for 30 days. That's what I did when installing to my secondary computer, as I'm not sure I'll keep this upgrade unless they can get the lag bugs worked out.

[xrd...@adobeforums.com]

Just to say that I have the same problem with my paid for CS4 upgrade. If the screen magnification is not at one of the prefered values like 25% or 33% then the image is blurry. Strangely, as has been said, if you have it in a floating window and you pick it up to move it then it instantly goes sharp and goes blurry again the moment you release it. This is with a Wacom pen, just the same as with the mouse.

[Vega...@adobeforums.com]

Same here with regard to rather odd behaviour that if you have a floating window and pick it up, it will go sharp and then blurry again as you relase the mouse.

Example screenshot here:
<http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3022/3008924710_bb03e33032_o.jpg>

[CR_Hen...@adobeforums.com]

xrdbear:Just to say that I have the same problem with my paid for CS4

Ditto.
Win Ultimate x64
Intel DG965WH motherboard with Q6...@2.4GHz & 8GB RAM
nVidia 9800 GTX+ with 178.24 drivers

Turn off the OpenGL and the image stays sharp and extremely slow.

This is a MAJOR problem with the OpenGL implementation.

If you haven't already you should submit a bug report to <http://www.adobe.com/go/wish>

I already have.

[CR_Hen...@adobeforums.com]

CR Henderson:nVidia 9800 GTX+ with 178.24 drivers

Just updated to latest beta drivers, 180.43, same problem.

If you haven't already you should submit a bug report to <http://www.adobe.com/go/wish>

Heard back from Adobe. Someone is looking into the problem. I pointed him to this thread.

[CR_Hen...@adobeforums.com]

Update:

Adobe has informed me that they have duplicated the problem of image blur with OpenGL and will be looking for a solution.

[Niels...@adobeforums.com]

It is easy to see the effect of the blurring by dragging a picture (left click and hold on the frame) in OpenGL mode. The photo goes out of OpenGL mode while you are dragging the picture around - and the photo becomes sharp. When you are dragging the small shadow under the picture also dissapear - a sign of that you are in non-OpenGL mode.

If you try and proof colors - that is making a weird result for me in OpenGL mode. Let's say I want to proof windows rgb colors - the reds are overly saturated.. When dragging around with the photo (like in the former example), suddenly the colors are proofed correctly..

Don't know if the answers have already been given, but I haven't found them yet.

[Swo...@adobeforums.com]

Hello again!

first to say - sorry about my bad english.i hope you understand me anyway. since my last post in this thread it seems that many people have mentioned this issue and i am really looking forward to a solution. me and my friends, we tried since the last post following: we reinstalled every driver , wacom tablett (old and new ones) again the grafik drivers and, we even reinstalled blank windows (vista 32 and 64 and xp 32 and 64).we tried everything... with and withoud service pack and so one (we also changed resloution). we now really tried everything...and allways the same...blurry and unsharp. so what is us telling this....no matter if it is vista or xp...no matter how many ram you have, no matter what grafikcard manufacturer you have....this issue is allways here on all 4 systems. i really wonder that here not more people are talking about that problem cause it is really a major problem. also in the thread <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b6d78b/0> people talk about lags and everything else, but not about this issue and in my opinion this is no question if or if not this problem belongs to gpu problems - it is definetly a gpu problem. as a last piece of hope i tried the registry trick for old gpu´s (allthough i have a gtx260) and guess what....it didn´t changed anything. so...after hours and hours of trying and trying and hoping we really do not know what to do and it is really frustrating don´t you others think so?

wish you all a nice day!

[PeterK.@adobeforums.com]

How blurry is blurry? I assumed that with the new zoom features, the images would naturally appear slightly "blurry," since pixels would have to be interpolated, whereas in previous versions Photoshop would only show the actual whole pixels in the image. There was a discussion we once had about people complaining that the images only looked good at 100%, 50%, 25%, etc. whereas it looked stair-stepped at other percentages, and I think the general consensus was that we DIDN'T want photoshop showing interpolated (fake) images. Showing only exact pixels and knowing that some pixels are thrown out incongruously at odd percentages was more desirable than having interpolation of any kind showing "fake" pixels. I assumed that when these new zooming features were introduced, the powers that be at Adobe decided otherwise.

[Vega...@adobeforums.com]

PeterK
Slightly blurry as if you were uprezing an image - ok.
But it should not be like this :
<http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3022/3008924710_bb03e33032_o.jpg>

[PeterK.@adobeforums.com]

I saw that image, but I didn't think it looked that far from what I envisioned the interpolation to look like. Try a test. Make a bitmap image (black and white only) or a series of shapes, circles, diagonal lines, etc. all without antialiasing, try a few different zoom percentages, take screenshots, and then examine them up close to see to what extent the interpolation is happening. I'm guessing it should somewhat resemble antialiasing and you'll end up getting a pixel of greys running along the edges of your shapes.

[Larry_...@adobeforums.com]

I just made a post about this earlier tonight. This problem of blurry images is much worse when working with images that have hard, aliased edges, which is what I normally work with. Looking at these blurry images actually makes my eyes feel out of focus and causes me to start blinking trying to clear my eyes. My company recently bought a copy to start testing CS4 but this one thing is already a show stopper. We're back using CS3 where these images look normal and better. I hope that Adobe will make this new display preference an option.

[PeterK.@adobeforums.com]

Well, there's your problem! We had discussions on this, and interpolating images was generally regarded as NOT the way to go! Putting in pixels that aren't really there is poor behaviour for a professional image-editing program. Taking them out on a zoom out (as the previous behaviour) and knowing that pixels were necessarily being thrown out at odd percentages because you can't split a pixel, but knowing that all the pixels you were seeing were the exact, correct colour is far more desirable.
I think you can chalk up the change to yet another bow to the ignorant layman to try to snag a bigger user base.
(ex. layman: "Why does this look so ugly! Even my Windows picture viewer looks better than this! And they want me to pay 700 dollars for this piece of crap?")
The fact that even aliased images get interpolated with this new display method is just ridiculous.

[J_Ma...@adobeforums.com]

CS3, 2, 1 and on down: I make a 1 pixel pattern of black and white parallel lines, and zoom out to 50%. I get gray.

[Swo...@adobeforums.com]

So Peter do you wanna tell us that this is not a bug....it is a feature???i cannot believe that! so many people i know that work with cs4 are complaining about that issue!do we have to live with this now or did i missunderstand you? as i allready said, my english is pretty poor :-)! in 3 days my trial is over....and really....i will not buy cs4 with this option! i was really looking forward to the 3d tools but....sorry no! i also wonder why never an adobe engineer came to this thread or said anything to this issue! was it because they couldn´t say UPDATE YOUR VIDEO CARD DRIVERS or something like that?? when i read all those threads here this seems to be the only answer they can give! can anybody here tell us please IF there will be an update or something in the future....even if it is NO...please be so fair and tell us....cause ps is not cheap!

[Mathias_...@adobeforums.com]

You have the option to turn off OpenGL in Preferences - then you wont see the antialiasing.

Personally, I dont see what you are fuzzing about - a lot of people have requested this very feature. As always, the most accurate previews is at 12,5%, 25%, 50% and 100%.

[PeterK.@adobeforums.com]

CS3, 2, 1 and on down: I make a 1 pixel pattern of black and white parallel
lines, and zoom out to 50%. I get gray.

Ah yes, so it is. I was partly wrong. At the reduced zooms it changes the value of the pixels to something that would approximate what you see at the reduced size with a blur-average type colour mixing, which makes some sense. (I made 4 pixel-width coloured lines, and at 50%, I would expect half of them to be thrown away, so then which colours take precedence in the display? They're all important, so the only natural conclusion I thought was that they MUST be blended in value with a blur-average approach, and sure enough, checking the values displayed at 50% and performing blur-average on the initial 4 lines, two at a time, results in identically-coloured stripes! Photoshop is (was?) smarter than I initially thought!)
BUT the older versions of Photoshop still do not anti-alias and introduce pixels that aren't there, only throwing away pixels that it can't split. Anti-aliased pixels are the "feature" that's causing the images to appear blurry.

[Swo...@adobeforums.com]

Mathias Vejerslev - 10:40am Dec 4, 08 PST (#26 of 26)

You have the option to turn off OpenGL in Preferences - then you wont see the antialiasing.

Personally, I dont see what you are fuzzing about - a lot of people have requested this very feature. As always, the most accurate previews is at 12,5%, 25%, 50% and 100%.

mathias...as i wrote above: if i turn off opengl this issue is no more but cs4 is very laggy then and unaceptable slow

so let me understand you....you say to me i shall turn off open gl and have a very slow cs4 comparing to cs3 and shall pay thatfore...as i allready said above..i do a lot of people and landscape photography...i am used to scroll with the mouse...zoom out..check evrything..zoom in again...and also many others are used to work like that...in my opionien IF this is a feature adobe should make a button to turn that of....but we allready tried to turn it off with nvidia and ati properties...nothing worked! and i am sure that when the people requested taht feature they did not meant pictures looking unsharp and blurry like that...

see you!

[Wern...@adobeforums.com]

Hi to all....
I am working in an architectural office. We make animations
from buildings (Sizes on paper are more than A0 -
really often zoom in and out). We only use CS3 for end finishing.
Now we wanted to chance to CS4. In the first time we are very
happy with the new product much faster and easier to use. But after
hours my employees says he has problems with his eyes. He is
wearing glasses - he thought that they are getting old and
that´s the problem so an other employees tried to finished his work but
after minutes he had the same problem. We found out that everything
when we zoom out everything is getting blurry. We have tried to
use it on an other system - same problem - only deactivating opengl in
CS4 helps. But if you do that - it´s like working on a computer
from the 90´s. In my opinion I think we will use CS3 further - saving
a lot of money. (never change a running system)

Same here with regard to rather odd behavior that if you have a

floating window and pick it up, it will go sharp and then blurry

again as you release the mouse.

Some screenshot here:
1.) <http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3038/3082240267_e579cd3e19_o.jpg>
2.) <http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3083/3082240425_26a3b5d628_o.jpg>
3.) <http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3276/3083113430_eac1cf8885_b.jpg>

[Mathias_...@adobeforums.com]

If you hate this so much, I think your best bet is to put in a feature request that it be made an option in preferences.

[Wern...@adobeforums.com]

@ Verjerslev - who said i hate it. only said that my office will use CS3 for the next time and save 12 x about 1000€ cause we can´t work with that blurry problem.

Best regards from Austria

[Mathias_...@adobeforums.com]

Use CS, CS3, or Photoshop 4 - why would we care? We are just users like yourself, as the banner on top of the page clearly states. If you want to get in contact with adobe, you best follow my advice.

[Swo...@adobeforums.com]

vejerslev if you would have read the thread you would have seen that crhenderson allready did that....and you would have seen how adobe reacted!...that was nearly 1 month ago...no further comments..nothing...and also my question....IF this is a feature...why then the following comment from adobe: Adobe has informed me that they have duplicated the problem of image blur with OpenGL and will be looking for a solution. - problem??looking for a solution?? an a feature???? HELLOOO?and if you look at werners images..., sorry but are you blind???how can ANY professioninal or semiprofessional or even an ambitioned amateur work with pictures looking like that??did you have a look at them? no wonder that the eyes are burning...and sorry...okey maybe he will not bye cs4 but 1000€ x 12 are 12000€..and if adobe handles customers from an architecture buero which would buy 12 licenses...like this...then maybe they should talk to general motors how to get to some money!

photoshop is a product which should be built FOR the user...and it should work properly for that huge amount of money...ps7 did..cs did cs2 did and cs3 was nearly perfect...as MANY customers would say...ps cs4 is the worst product adobe ever released! if you look at werners pictures ...if you have eyes in your head..NO one can say THIS IS GOOD....or he is blind!

have a nice day!

[John Joslin]

Not everyone gets these symptoms though!

[Swo...@adobeforums.com]

everyone i know who has turned on opengl....and i know 13 pc users and 3 mac users. from the pc users wirk even 3 with american versions of adobe rest with german. but as said...only on other zoom levels than 100, 50 etc percent!

[Wern...@adobeforums.com]

@john pls tell me your config of your desktop if you haven´t any problems.

[John Joslin]

<http://imageshack.us>

[Mathias_...@adobeforums.com]

Looking at Werners pictures I see something called antialiasing, which is a feature, introduced in Photoshop CS4 along with other OpenGL features. Honestly, my eyes hurt more from looking at the old way of doing aliased semi-previews.

The blurring of pictures when dragging windows may or may not be a bug. I couldn't say.

Mathias

[Wern...@adobeforums.com]

@Mathias in my opinion you are totally right between opengl and antialiasing - but if i want to have antialiasing at my pictures then i use filterns. the picture should be in cs4 naturally not blurry not wrong colors or s´th else. therefore i use this program.The programm shoudn´t do s´th which isn´t the truth.

[Mathias_...@adobeforums.com]

cs4 naturally

But why do you feel the old way of doing previews was better? Many people felt that they were harsh-looking with stairstepping aliased semi-previews. Thos could hardly be called accurate either.

As said, if you want an accurate preview, you really must preview at 12,5%, 25%, 50% or 100%. As always.

[Wern...@adobeforums.com]

know that you must preview in all stages - but the most basically thing for me is that in cs3 there wasn´t that problem - speed wasn´t much more bad that in cs4.

[CR_Hen...@adobeforums.com]

Swordcs:vejerslev if you would have read the thread you would have seen

that crhenderson allready did that....and you would have seen how adobe
reacted!...that was nearly 1 month ago

I actually said: Adobe has informed me that they have duplicated the problem

of image blur with OpenGL and will be looking for a solution.

That was my paraphrasing their response. I used the word 'problem' because it appeared to be a problem from my viewpoint. The Adobe engineeer that replied to my bug report actually said "I am seeing this on my Vista64 system with an nVidia 8800GT card..." and "Now we need to find a way to resolve it"

From my viewpoint his response doesn't indicate a 'Feature' or a 'Bug' so either viewpoint could be correct.

I expect we will have some resolution of most of the OpenGL problems in CS4 in the not too distant future and I suspect that Adobe is taking so long because they do not want to release an update that doesn't address most of the problems people are seeing.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

also adam didn't indicate if it was an adobe problem or if the problem lies somewhere else. adobe has at times worked around bugs in other apps or the os.

[Robert_...@adobeforums.com]

My one wish with all of the GPU stuff was that they add a new section to the
Photoshop preferences section with check boxes to turn off the various GPU
options. Like the zoom antialiasing. As it is the only way to turn off the
GPU stuff is to turn off all of the GPU stuff. Not very good option when
only a feature or two is causing problems. But, anyways since most of the
stuff is more gimick I just turned it all off.

Robert

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

My one wish with all of the GPU stuff was that they add a new section
to the Photoshop preferences section with check boxes to turn off the
various GPU
options.

Nope. Then they have disabled many of the things that I upgraded for.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

I would, however, happily accept a refund beyond their 30-day limit.

Oops, I'm sounding pissy/whiny again!

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

you better watch that mister! :)

[Robert_...@adobeforums.com]

True, but then if it keeps crashing because if it and the problem is because
of poor drivers which is how it looks for most of the issues then....

Robert

[iVan_B.@adobeforums.com]

Nick, I wasn't referring to you. I forget who it was, but someone was being snappy with the Adobe guys who were working on a problem.

As far as blurry stuff, outside the zoom levels Vegard was talking about, I think it's due to the fact Photoshop is using simple bicubic interpolation to process the image displayed on screen. In previous versions it was nearest neighbor, which made images appear sharper, but it was also doing weird stuff to areas of an image that had repeating patterns and high contrasts.

Unless, of course, you're talking really blurry. If that's the case, I'm not sure what the issue is.

[John Joslin]

But, anyways since most of the stuff is more gimick (sic)

Sez you Mister. You obviously gave it a superficial look and dismissed it out of hand. Some of those features are real work-savers!

[iVan_B.@adobeforums.com]

NOTE: In my previous post I replied before reading the entire thread (sorry), so here is a little plug-in:

It IS a feature, not a bug. But the good news is that you can still see the image interpolated with the nearest neighbor if you don't like the blur. Grab the tab and drag.

In reality, when you really think about it, in the case where image is too large to fill the screen nicely at 100% (unless one works with a web image, that's pretty much always), in earlier versions one wouldn't see the true image anyway when zoomed out at arbitrary zoom levels. It would appear sharper compared to CS4, but that was deceiving as pixels are dropped out. Now it appears blurry as pixels are being interpolated. You lose either way.

Ultimately I use 100% zoom level to check fidelity, and fill screen to check composition. Fake blur, or fake sharpness - same dif; I know I'm not seeing the actual pixels in CS3 or CS4 outside 100%

I don't like it, but once I rationalize it, I realize it's just a matter of getting used to it - I have no rational argument why sharper is better when it's not a true image I'm seeing.

[stephe...@adobeforums.com]

Mac user here, and I'll post in the Mac section as well.... but I'm getting the same result on my Mac Pro tower with a RadeonX1900 for video. And this is happening at 50% view. The smoothing of the text isn't so disagreeable, but the image really does blur.

Here's a screengrab, with the same file opened in CS4 and CS3 side by side.

<http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/826/picture1pf9.png>