Hello there this is my first post.

I just got photoshop and learnt all my previous photo editing on GIMP. I notice with photoshop though the quality of the image while I'm editing it is very pixelated and the colours never look as good when zoomed out compared to GIMP. I find it a lot harder to see what the photo as a whole looks like when I'm trying to improve it because of this low quality. Is this normal, or is there a way to improve it?

sounds like GIMP uses anti-aliasing at all view sizes much like the way that Live Picture displayed an image which is something photoshop doesn't do...

sounds like GIMP uses anti-aliasing at all view sizes much like the way that Live Picture displayed an image which is something photoshop doesn't do...

Oh that's too bad. You'd think that photoshop being the most popular photo-editing program would have a feature like... Thanks for the response though

Purpletofu, welcome to RP! If your colors do not look right, you may not have your color management settings properly set up. Check Edit>Color Preferences.
If the image looks pixelated it could well be that it really is. Photoshop can display the image as it really is. Personally I prefer to deal with the reality of what is there.
Regards, Murray

Purpletofu, I don't know if this is what you meant or not but..
you can go to Window>Documents>New Window..
Set it at 100% and your working picture at 700% or whatever and all the correction work you are doing can be seen as soon as you let off the button at 100%

Purpletofu, welcome to RetouchPRO! If your colors do not look right, you may not have your color management settings properly set up. Check Edit>Color Preferences.
If the image looks pixelated it could well be that it really is. Photoshop can display the image as it really is. Personally I prefer to deal with the reality of what is there.
Regards, Murray

Hello, I haven't checked the colours yet but fixing that is not really a big deal. I did a screen shot of the same photo loaded on each program at %15 If you look closely and zoom in on the phtotoshop one you can see how square the pixels look.
Also, I know it has something to do with photoshop because everywhere else I load my photos onto from my camera be it gimp, preview, facebook etc. they look fine. When I load the photo from photoshop once I've edited it, it looks fine.
Anyway, take a look at the difference in screenshots and tell me what you think. Thanks!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v315/purpletofu/natpsshot.jpg (Photoshop)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v315/purpletofu/natgshot.jpg (GIMP)

Edit:: now that I look at them it's hard to tell because the pictures aren't large enough, if you load them and zoom in you can really see the difference.

you're better off using "command-shift-4" and drawing a marquee just around the areas you want us to look at...