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Everything in Photoshop CS6 gets pixelated


Micky_N

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I have a problem with photoshop. Everything I do gets pixelated.

When I paste or place an object from Illustrator CS6 I choose place as smart object and as soon as I pace it it gets pixelated. I have tried with and without the anti-aliased box checked. When the box is checked photoshop pixelates the image and when the box is not checked the image looks really strange and digital with the pixels showing. All curves that were smooth and nice in Illustrator looks jagged and strange.

When I try and draw a shape in photoshop it looks in the layer-list like it's a shape layer but the object is heavily pixeled.

I have tried opening a file created in Autocad (by using dwg to PDF) and opening it as a smart object in Photoshop. Everything is pixelated.

When starting a new file in PS I have a 300 pix per inch resolution, 16 bits RGB color, sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as my color profile and square pixels as my pixel aspect ratio.
Under general preferences I have the box for "Place or drag raster images as smart objects" (I have also tried without it). I have also tried with the box for "snap vector tools and transform to pixel grid" on and off.


Regardless of what i do photoshop still pixelates everything. I have no idea what to do. Could there be some sort of setting that I have overlooked?
 

ALB68

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Hi Mickey
Have you deleted and re-set your Photoshop Preferences? Sometimes this fixes weird PS problems. Give it a shot. You sound if your experienced so I won't go into how to do it .
 

Micky_N

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Thank you for replying!

Yes, I have tried that and I even re-installed the entire program. No change! Is it possible there could be something wrong with my PS-product? It sounds more like a setting-problem but I don't know what it could be!
 

IamSam

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Micky, is there any way you can post a screen shot of this pixelation?
 
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ALB68

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Thank you for replying!

Yes, I have tried that and I even re-installed the entire program. No change! Is it possible there could be something wrong with my PS-product? It sounds more like a setting-problem but I don't know what it could be!

What happens if the PS file is 8 bit?
 

ALB68

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ALB68

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IamSam

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I thought that we had discussed this before. I looked for the thread and could not find it.
 

ALB68

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I thought that we had discussed this before. I looked for the thread and could not find it.
Seems I remember something too.
 

ALB68

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Micky_N

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As I hope you can see not using the anti-alias makes the image look like sh*t and using AA makes my placed smart object look very pixelated.
 
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ALB68

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As I hope you can see not using the anti-alias makes the image look like sh*t and using AA makes my placed smart object look very pixelated.

Is this a new issue? I mean ..has it ever worked? I think you have a software issue. Have you considered upgrading to CC ? I think Adobe support might help you..have you tried them?
 

Micky_N

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I haven't tried using smart objects a lot previously but as far as I know I have always had this issue. Should I try and update my software?
 

ALB68

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I haven't tried using smart objects a lot previously but as far as I know I have always had this issue. Should I try and update my software?

Have you checked Adobe updates? They are still supporting CS6 and still send updates to me via Creative Cloud. Suggest you check with them. The Creative Cloud thing they are doing works really well for me, but situations are different and it is a subscription thing. If you just use Photoshop and nothing else, I think you can get it for like $9.95 a month. Then you will get CC2014 and they give you the updates as soon as they come out for free.
 

thebestcpu

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Hi Micky
I have looked at your vector PDFs and your two rasterized PDFs of you samples. I have looked at them in both CS6 an CC

The only issue that I see is that there are insufficient pixels so it does not look pixelated. 300 pixels per inch is insufficient to avoid having it looking pixelated when the total inch size is only a little over an inch in width.

When I duplicate your process I get the same results --- that is until I increase the canvas size and free transform the Smart Ojbect to a larger size. The screen shot below is just scaling to a canvas that was scaled up by 300%


I could be wrong yet I think it is simple as expanding the canvas size and transforming the Smart Object to fill the larger canvas size. All lines look very smooth to me when I do so

Screen Shot 2014-12-29 at 9.58.29 PM.png

I hope this information is helpful.
 
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Tom Mann

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"The only issue that I see is that there are insufficient pixels so it does not look pixelated. 300 pixels per inch is insufficient to avoid having it looking pixelated when the total inch size is only a little over an inch in width. ..."

Thanks for jumping in, John. That's exactly what I suspected, as well, but was visiting out-of-town family friends and couldn't really provide any substantive help. I don't know if this is the actual problem in this case, but I've seen very similar questions asked numerous times in the past where the reason was indeed that simple. It gets a lot of newbies.

Cheers,

Tom
 

Micky_N

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Thank you all for responding, I too have been away over the holiday and have not seen your answers.

ALB 68: Does the placement of vector objects work better in newer versions of Photoshop?

I am a student of architecture and the examples I showed you were made from my home computer. Sure I could try and upgrade my software but I'm not sure what version we have at the university. I believed that working with vector objects was a feature in photoshop starting from CS4 or something like that so that's why I was so confused as to why it wouldn't work for me at CS6.

As for the solution of scaling up my files in PS. I did that by creating a large canvas of 30 000 pixels and then placing the file from Illustrator and before clicking "place" in PS i scaled it up by first 300% and then 1000%. The image does become better and it is not nearly as pixelated as an regular image would be if blown up 10 times in photoshop would be. However if you zoom in close you can still see the pixels which is confusing because I thought a placed vector object would be a real vector object like in Illustrator. Am I wrong about that?

If you try and work with the solution of blowing everything up in size should I import my autocad drawings into Illustrator at size 1:10 and then place them in photoshop by scaling it up to 1000% for a total scale of 1:100? (I am working only with the metric system) Using both Illustartor and PS can be a drag sometimes but some drawing and images just needs textures and images that Illustrator can't really handle.
 

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