Pixelated at 100%

[raynapolsky]

Hi everyone! You've helped me before, so maybe you can help me again.

I'm working on an image I scanned from a negative at 2400dpi.

When I view it at 100%, there are still some areas that look pixelated and "jaggy". Why is this? I thought it was supposed to look all smooth and perfect!

Here's a little section where it's especially bad. What can I do?

Thanks everyone

~ Rayna

[Tony W]

Just a quick thought even though this is a greyscale image have you tried scanning the negative as if it is colour. It may make a difference and allow you to make a selection based on the best channel information - on the other hand it may not . Truth is I am not sure if it will help but I always seem to scan B&W images in colour mode

[raynapolsky]

It's actually RGB; it's just desaturated because I did a channel mixer adjustment layer.

But thanks!

I've had some luck with the blur tool, though.

[Chain]

Hmm, I don't see the pixellation you are talking about... I just see horrible JPEG-artifacts.
Was this scanned to a JPEG file? (if so, that would be bad)

It could just be from you saving it for upload here, but I don't know you well enough to tell.

Ps: You might want to add some input sharpening in Photoshop to make it a little bit crisper.

[raynapolsky]

Ah, they're called artifacts? You know, I may have scanned it as a JPEG. It's a TIFF now, but yeah, it was born a JPEG.

Thanks, Chain! Lesson learned.

[Chain]

Yep, every time something is saved as JPEG it will loose quality. Often this looks like 16x16 blocks and blur/fuzzyness - especially visible on hard edges. Higher JPEG quality setting helps but there will always be some loss.
Also note that every time a JPEG file is opened and saved again this loss in quality will increase (as it is recompressed).

Therefore (important) files should not be saved as JPEG - especially if you intend to do any work on them.

Tip: If you use TIFF, turn on the LZW compression. It's lossless and on average it will cut the file size in half.