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Resolution, Sharpen, and Magnification in Photoshop

Lesson 4 from: Stupid Moves in Photoshop

Ben Willmore

Resolution, Sharpen, and Magnification in Photoshop

Lesson 4 from: Stupid Moves in Photoshop

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

4. Resolution, Sharpen, and Magnification in Photoshop

Lesson Info

Resolution, Sharpen, and Magnification in Photoshop

when it comes to resolution in viewing your image, there's only one really accurate view of your picture. And that is when you look at the top of your image, usually has the name of the file. And then there's a percentage right here says 50% in this case, Uh, but if that doesn't say 100% than your don't truly have an accurate view of your image. So sometimes what I find is that people will do a lot of work on their images that are unnecessary. And let's see if I confined take me just a moment, an image where this might be the case. If you look at this particular image, can you see a problems with it? This is a stitch panorama, and it has what looks like little worms crawling across it like their low tracks. And the stupid move here would be, assuming that the view of your image when you're zoomed all the way out so you can see the entire image is accurate. You think in your head that it's accurate, but your screen just doesn't have enough little pixels that make it up to show you all t...

he detail that's in it. The Onley view of your image that's 100% accurate is when the number of the top of your image is 100. So watch those little seems that are there. And if I zoom up Zuma, you notice that once I get up there, especially if I get to 100% those problems don't actually exist in this image. It's only when I'm zoomed out that they are an issue, and the reason why they're an issue is because this is all made out of separate layers. If I turn off one layer at a time, you'd see that each chunk here is a separate layer, and it's just when you're zoomed all the way out on your image. It's trying to combine those individual chunks together and do it very fast, and when it does, it's not completely precise. So the stupid move here would be trying to retouch out these problems that aren't actually in your file. Instead, it's an artifact of zooming out on your image so much that there's not enough information on your screen. Your screen just doesn't have enough dots that it's made out of to show you all that's in there, and sometimes you get these bad looks, So what you need to do is zoom upon your image 100% view before you really think there's an issue. If you still see the issue at 100% view that it's truly in your file. In this case, I could get rid of the issue by simply combining these layers together. I'm gonna choose merge Visible, which will combine the layers. Then it doesn't have to calculate the individual layers at the zoomed out view. It doesn't at full size in here. The end result looks smooth, but often times I'll see people trying to fix problems that don't truly exist. And if you want to see an example here, this grid, if I view it 100% view you'll see is just squares and each glares at exactly the same size. But as I zoom out on the picture now, they don't look like they're exactly the same size anymore. Some of them are looking bolder than others. If I zoom out further looks OK, but then again, they're starting to look different. It's just not consistent. It's only when you get to 100% view that you have an accurate view of your picture. And then if you haven't even increment of that above 100 meaning like 204 100 that kind of stuff. Those are accurate as well. But any time you're below don't trust your screen completely. It's an overall overall view, but zoom up when you need to do it. Then there's another thing that's very easy to do, and that is, whenever you create a brand new document, you can type in a width and height, and often times you come in here and specified in inches because you know a particular sheet of paper you might print on, like in 8.5 by sheet of paper, and you have to pick a number two go right here in resolution, and there are certain ranges that worked good for that. And if you want to know my general advice on it, here are some general ranges you can use. But whenever you see numbers like this, you should know that they relate to photographs. If what you have is not a photograph than these air, not appropriate photographs have shades of gray and shades of color and the reproduced using tiny little dots on your printer, where you don't need to have a huge amount of information in the file. These general ranges. If you want to know when should you go lower? When should you know? Higher? Most of the time you want to go higher. Any time you have crisp edges, especially straight lines that are just a little bit off from being straight, you might be thinking, When is that? Well, if you take a picture of a skyscraper, all the windows are crisp lines. They're usually pretty darn close to being straight, but they might be off the teeniest bit because your camera angle you take a picture of a guitar with the guitar strings, and the light is catching the strings. Those air crisp straight lines that might be a little bit off from being perfectly straight up or down. Well, when that's the case you needed, tend towards the higher side, and then the rest of the time you can get away with the lower side as long as you don't have those crisp edges. But when do you have the biggest problem there? Well, The biggest problem is when you have what I would call Leinart. Leinart is anything that is solid, black and solid white or be solid colors. You might just call it a graphic like this. If what you have is a graphic like that, the resolution numbers that I just showed you are not high enough would happens when you have stuff like this is you have such crisp edges that if you're ever going to see Jay G's when you print out, it's gonna be with that kind of stuff, and that's when you want to go higher. How high? Well, the highest that you would usually need is a resolution of 1200 1200. Sounds like an extremely high number. 1200 is usually needed if you're putting out a printing press, and that means you're printing a high quality brochure that Deborah thing. If instead you're putting on a desktop printer. If you can find out the resolution of that printer, the closer you get to that number, the crisper it's gonna look um, related to that is if you need to scan anything that started out as solid, black and solid white like your signature or ah, logo. Well, if he ended up doing a skit signature a logo here it helps to be a drawing. You have many different choices when you scan it, and most people I find end up scanning it in grayscale mode. Well, there's a problem with grayscale mode, and that is the edge of your image will look weird. It will look fuzzy, and that's because it's gonna reproduce this using little dots just like it does a photograph. You know how when you go in the newspaper, you look at a photo in the newspaper. You hold it up close to your eye, being see little dots it's made out of, Well, this is gonna be me out a little dots, which means it will not look crisp on the edge. And if you do with your logo or something else in grayscale mode, that will be. The case which you want to do is end up in a mode and photo shop that's called bit map mode. In bit map mode, you could only have solid black and solid white with no shades of gray. The problem is, if you scan on image where it first starts out and it comes in in ah bit map mode. It could look like this. If you look at this, it has a lot less detail than this version done that. So here's how you can end up with solid black and solid white and end up with a lot of detail. So here's what I would do first scan whatever it is you're scanning. If it's a graphic as grayscale, then sharpen it. You want to sharpen it so that any of these little, uh, kind of white lines the really thin ones are exaggerated because if you don't sharpen it, if you see here before it looks kind of soft, if you sharpen it, it becomes much more well defined. You see, I'm clicking in this little area to shave before versus after, but what happens is the little thin lines in your graphic become more pronounced. Then if you change the mode of your picture to what you really need, which is called bit map, that means solid black and solid white. When this comes up, the default setting is a stupid move. When it comes to graphics, diffusion dither the fusion Deborah means try to simulate shades of gray using tiny little specks, and that's going to make the edges of anything look specially. Let's see if what it looks like when I do this. If I zoom up on this picture, can you see the speck? Aly. Everything about it. It looks specially all over the place. That's the default settings. When you change it, choose, undo. Here's what you want to dio uh, it's when you go to bit map. There's a choice in there that's called 50% threshold. Use it. It will give you solid black and solid white where it's not going to look. Spec lei on the edges. So what's the stupid move? The stupid move is first off when you scan a logo or graphic or signature and you're gonna print it, you really want it to be solid black imprinted on a solid white sheet of paper. If you do that, you get a nice, crisp edge, and it looks like you sign your name with a pen, where it looks like traditional printing where you see those graphics. If, on the other hand, you scan is gray scale and leave it in grayscale on the edges of your image. It's going to be made out of little spots, just like it makes photos. It's called 1/2 tone, and it's not gonna look crisp. So what do you do about it? You scanning grayscale, sharpen it? And then when you convert to what's known as bit mapped mode, which is just under the mode menu here, um, don't use the default setting. There was a setting called 50% Threshold, and if you use it, you will get a nice, crisp edge instead of a bunch of specs. Now that's one that it's so easy to mess up on that. It's kind of weird. You have to go through all those steps, but it really makes a big difference.

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I loved this class - Ben is a really good teacher and the class is full of great easy to follow advice.

Bonnie
 

First off, the title cracked me up. The course was very good, easy to follow and Ben's a great instructor.

user 12004e
 

Excellent! Much better than I thought it would be. Invaluable.

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