So I’m checking over my reinvigorate account and noticed that some people are looking for some specific help. Let me address some of them.

1) How do I turn off the zoomed in grid [the pixel grid] in CS4?

In Photoshop CS4, when you zoom in beyond 500%, a grid appears outlining the pixels. This can be great when working in big fields of solid colors, but not so useful when doing something like pixel art or spot-photo-retouching. To turn off this grid, go to View > Show > Pixel Grid. If checked, clicking it will uncheck it and the grid will not appear when zoomed in beyond 500%. Similarly you can find many other things in this menu like guides and 3D axes.

2) How do I get anti-aliased rendering when zoomed out in Photoshop CS4? Why do my open pictures still look jagged when zoomed out in Photoshop CS4?

In CS4, Adobe finally addressed the issue of open documents looking jagged and partially unreadable at non standard zoom levels. [like 33.33%, 66.66% etc.] Using hardware acceleration, CS4 renders the images with filtering, anti-aliasing the pixels to appear smooth at any zoom level. Unfortunately, this rendering requires graphic acceleration. On some Mac computers, this can be tricky, as it uses the Mac OS OpenGL acceleration to render open documents. Sometimes the graphics acceleration will break because you have a secondary monitor attached to your system. This is rare, but it does happen, especially on MacBook Pros. Detach your second monitor, open Photoshop, then plug your second monitor back in again. You should find that the graphics acceleration works all of the sudden. Also be advised that the acceleration does not always work in some releases of the Windows 7 Beta, and under normal Windows [Xp/Vista] releases, having your absolute most recently updated graphics drivers can help.

If you’re not sure if your Photoshop CS4 graphics acceleration is working, you can check it in the preferences. Open the Photoshop CS4 preferences, [Photoshop > Preferences > Performance for mac. Edit > Preferences, go to Performance for Windows.] There’s a box that will list your currently active video card and rendering method [DirectX, OpenGL.] If this box displays empty with  no information, then something isn’t working correctly. The best troubleshooting methods are
1) updaing your OS
2) updating Photoshop CS4
3) Updating your graphics drivers
4) Hardware issues like an attached secondary monitor, Cintiq Tablet, or your computer just may need a restart.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Art & Design, Personal, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.