Jagged line problem

[Laughing Dragon]

Hi, all. I'm a newbie, and a proud owner of a Cintiq 21ux. But I've been having my issues with it. Mostly when it comes to line quality.

My favorite brush is the felt marker. Now, when I open a new file in Photoshop Elements 4, and use the default PSE4 size for my canvas, at which point the resolution is 72 DPI, the lines I draw come out looking nice and smooth. But when I use a letter size canvas (8 1/2 x 11), the lines look jagged, at least onscreen (when I enlarge the image the lines smooth out). Is there any way to fix this? If it's a resolution problem, what resolution should I use? The default resolution for letter-size canvas is 300 DPI. Thanks for any help you can give this poor frazzled Dragon.

[PsiBug]

Howdy!

I'm not sure if this is what you are experiencing but here's a little bit of photoshop info:

1) open your 8.5x11 300 dpi canvas. enlarge it to 100%. Draw a nice curved line with your preferred brush. It probably looks nice and smooth.

2) use the magnifying glass tool to zoom out one time (66% magnification) Now the line probably looks a little jagged.

3) zoom out again (50%) Is the line smooth again?

The lines generally look smoother at increments of 50% (...25%...12.5%...) than at increments of 66%, 33% etc (probably due to the way monitors work or the way photoshop and other programs translate the reduced-size images)

Another factor to consider is... When you get jagged lines, is your document in bitmapped mode instead of grayscale, rgb or cmyk?

Hope one of those two options helps you resolve the problem.

-Michael

[Laughing Dragon]

Howdy!

I'm not sure if this is what you are experiencing but here's a little bit of photoshop info:

1) open your 8.5x11 300 dpi canvas. enlarge it to 100%. Draw a nice curved line with your preferred brush. It probably looks nice and smooth.

2) use the magnifying glass tool to zoom out one time (66% magnification) Now the line probably looks a little jagged.

3) zoom out again (50%) Is the line smooth again?

The lines generally look smoother at increments of 50% (...25%...12.5%...) than at increments of 66%, 33% etc (probably due to the way monitors work or the way photoshop and other programs translate the reduced-size images)

Another factor to consider is... When you get jagged lines, is your document in bitmapped mode instead of grayscale, rgb or cmyk?

Hope one of those two options helps you resolve the problem.

-Michael

I followed your instructions, and you're right...the lines I drew looked wonderful at 100%, bad at 66%, then good again at 50%. What a relief! (And BTW, I always set my docs at grayscale, so that wasn't the problem).

I guess I need to work at increments of 50% from now on. Thanks so much!

[PsiBug]

You are very welcome!

[Fuseboy]

I had a similar sounding issue in PS 7 when drawing at 50% on a Cintiq 12WX. When zooming in to 100%, the lines were extremely jagged.

It appeared that the input position was being quantized/snapped to pixel locations, despite the fact that the tablet can sense nearly 2500 input locations per pixel.

I was worried this was a limitation of the tablet, or of Vista (neither of which would be convenient to change).

Anyways, turns out it was PS 7. Upgrading to PS CS 4 fixed that - I can draw very zoomed out and don't get stair-steps when I zoom back in to 100%.

[arttorney]

The thing about the jagged lines at different scales is not because of your graphics tablet. It is the program. Photoshop and other programs that are making raster type/bitmap drawings are subject to that problem more than vector type drawing that is scalable. Here is an interesting link about the problem: http://www.logodesignworks.com/blog/...ics-difference