Silly question

[pragmatist]

I'm using a 5D mk2 on my new 16-35mm. I noticed when taking a photo of Southwold pier recently and then downloading to the pc that some of the detail in the distance has a serrated edge but when zoomed in the serration dissapears and all is well. Am i missing something, Is my file too large. I'm shooting at maximum resolution.

 

[Photo Plod]

Is it not just that you're looking at a slightly compressed version of your full image when you view the whole thing at once? (i.e. the resolution and size of the image, when all viewed at once, are greater than your monitor can cope with).

 

[Denyerec]

What are you viewing it in? Before CS4, Photoshop was notorious for looking ghastly at non-round-number zoom levels. Anything other than 100%, 50% and 25% tend to look very jaggy indeed, it's nothing to do with the file, just how it resizes the view, so it could be that.

 

[Photo Plod]

What are you viewing it in? Before CS4, Photoshop was notorious for looking ghastly at non-round-number zoom levels. Anything other than 100%, 50% and 25% tend to look very jaggy indeed, it's nothing to do with the file, just how it resizes the view, so it could be that.

Far more coherently put than me! Photoshop will try and size things to your monitor, so if you end up looking at something at 91% zoom, things will look a little odd. There isn't any problem with your images / lens / kit at all.

 

[pragmatist]

Thanks Guys, I'm using Elements 7 and just on a laptop so that could be the problem

 

[photostar_1]

What are you viewing it in? Before CS4, Photoshop was notorious for looking ghastly at non-round-number zoom levels. Anything other than 100%, 50% and 25% tend to look very jaggy indeed, it's nothing to do with the file, just how it resizes the view, so it could be that.

I agree....a workshop I went to ages ago said NEVER look at an image on screen at anything other than 25, 50 or 100% as it will always look awful, but actually be fine, though I can't remember the technical reason for it.

 

[Denyerec]

(THe technical reason is that for fast display, it zooms to odd levels using pixelbinning or nearest-neighbour resizing, which is computationally cheap but ugly. CS4 uses the graphics card to do a (presumably basic) bicubic or bilinear downsize which is a much smoother but expensive way to downsample and image.