From the course: Photoshop One-on-One: Fundamentals

Zooming in and out - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop One-on-One: Fundamentals

Start my 1-month free trial

Zooming in and out

“

- [Instructor] All right, I'm going to start things off by showing you how to zoom in and out in an image here inside Photoshop. We're looking at a stock image from the Dreams Time Image Library, about which you can learn more and get some great deals @dreamstime.com/deke. And I noticed when you first opened an image, Photoshop zooms you out so you can see the entire thing, including the canvas. Which is the four walls of the rectangular image, and this dark area outside the canvas which is generally known as the pace board. Now, if you take a look up here in the title tab, you'll see the zoom ratio is 25%. For you it's going to be something higher because you're working on a larger display. Now that may lead you to believe that we're seeing one out of every four pixels. In fact, we're seeing one out of every four pixels horizontally, and one out of four vertically. So in other words, we're seeing one out of every 16 pixels. So in any of these pixels, in her hair, for example, each screen pixel is a blend of 16 neighboring pixels. Now, if I wanted to zoom in, I'd go up to the view menu and choose a zoom in command. But this is the kind of thing you'll be doing so frequently in Photoshop, that you want to remember a basic shortcut. Which is control plus here on our PC, or command plus on the Mac. And if you're working with the US keyboard, that's going to be the same key that includes the equal sign. And so I'll just go ahead and take advantage of the keyboard shortcut, by once again pressing control plus, or command plus on a Mac. And notice that zooms me in incrementally, and so now up here in the title tab, I can see that the zoom ratio is 33.3%. So in other words, we're seeing one out of every three pixels horizontally, and one out of three pixels vertically. So in other words, one out of every nine pixels. If I press control plus or command plus again, we zoom in to 50%. At which point we're seeing one out of two pixels horizontally, one at a two pixels vertically, and so each screen pixel is a blend of four image pixels. All right, now I'll press control plus or command plus again, at which point we're seeing the image at 66.7%. That means we're seeing two of the three horizontal pixels and two of the three vertical pixels. So in any block of nine image pixels, we're seeing a block of four. And then I'll go ahead and press control plus or command plus one more time, at which point the zoom ratio is a 100% meaning that we're seeing one image pixel for every screen pixel. So in other words, this is always going to be the most accurate view of the image. Now, I want you to notice that I've added a little brown X, right there at the center of the image. That X is going to grow as I zoom farther in. But the thing is, if I were to press control plus or command plus on the Mac, notice I've now zoomed to 200%, at which point we're just seeing bigger blockier pixels. And so notice as I continue to zoom in that X is growing bigger and blockier as well, and that's because there is no additional resolution beyond a 100% view size. Now, if I zoom in any farther on this particular screen then I'm going to see the pixel grid. So anything beyond 500% on a low rate screen, or anything beyond 800% on the high DPI, or retina display device. And so notice this very light grid that surrounds each and every pixel inside the image. All right, now let's say you want to zoom out. Then you can go up to the view menu and choose to zoom out command, again though, this is the kind of thing you'll be doing so regularly, that you'll want to use a keyboard shortcut instead, which makes a lot of sense. It's control minus here in the PC, or command minus on the Mac, which is the same as a hyphen. And so I'll just go ahead and escape out of there, and press control minus or command minus on the Mac until I get back out to a 100%. And so notice not only has the pixel grid disappeared but we are now seeing one screen pixel for every image pixel. All right, now let's say you want to zoom all the way out, so you can take in the entire image at a time. Then you want to go to the view menu and choose fit on screen, or you have that keyboard shortcut of control zero or command zero on the Mac. That's going to zoom you out to accustom zoom ratio. Notice up here in a title tab it reads 25.8%. Anytime you're looking at one of those incremental zoom levels that we saw earlier, which include 100%, 66.7, 50, 33.3, and so forth. You're going to get an accurately sharp view of your image. However, if you're looking at a custom ratio as we are now, then it's going to be softer. Now I'm going to demonstrate it's not going to show up in the video very well, but it will show up on your display if you're working along with me. Notice if I hit control minus or command minus on the Mac, I zoom out to 25% and the text get sharper by the way. Again, if you look carefully on your screen, you'll see it. Whereas if I press control zero or command zero on the Mac, in order to slightly adjust that zoom from exactly 25% to 25.8%, then the texts grows softer. So it is worth bearing in mind, if you want to see the sharpest, most accurate view of your image, then you want to zoom to one of these incremental ratios listed up here at the top. Now, another option is zoom to that 100% view size by going up to the view menu and choosing a 100%, or you've got another keyboard shortcut. This time of control one here on the PC, that's going to be command one on the Mac. At which point you're going to see one screen pixel for every image pixel. So in other words, you're seeing the image exactly as it is. All right, but I'm going to zoom back out by pressing control zero or command zero on the Mac, and then I'll zoom out even further so that we're not seeing the image of 25.8% but rather in my case at 25%, which is going to deliver sharper results. And of course I did that by pressing control minus or command minus on the Mac. And so just to review, here's our keyboard shortcuts right here. You can press control or command plus to zoom in, control or command minus to zoom out, control one or command one on a Mac to zoom to a 100%, which is also known as the one-to-one view. That is to say one screen pixel for every image pixel. And then finally, you've got control zero or commands zero, in order to fit the image on screen at a custom zoom ratio here inside Photoshop.

Contents