Zooming in on a picture...

[Miss Moo!!]

Helloooooo, this may sound like a stupid question and I have tried Googling it but with no luck...

When you have taken a picture and you are looking at it in Photoshop or Windows Photo Viewer, what % should you expect to be able to zoom in and the image still be in good quality?

I ask this question as I am wanting to know if my images are sharp enough...

I was told not to zoom in more than 50% to see the sharpness.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I am finding it hard to explain what I mean.

 

[happy haggis]

There are 2 schools of thought on this. The older view was that you should view an image at 100% to assess sharpness as that was the size the image would print at. In more recent years it has become more acceptable to view at 50% as with the increase in MP image sizes are much larger than they were.
Bottom line; either 50% or 100% take your pick.
If you're really not sure, try printing an image to see what it looks like 'in real life.'

 

[Miss Moo!!]

Thanks for that, I was zooming into 200%

I have now been told its called pixel peeping

 

[happy haggis]

Thanks for that, I was zooming into 200%

I have now been told its called pixel peeping

Sometimes it's useful to zoom in the higher magnifications, particularly for making awkward selections in Photoshop. Otherwise, I have never seen the point in, as you rightly say, pixel peeping.

 

[swanseamale47]

Photoshop only displays some things accurately (sharpness/ noise reduction etc) at 100%, although it does a fair job at 50% or 25%, it doesn't do so well with the in-between sizes.