Can't zoom to fit screen

I can’t manage to zoom to fit screen. If I hold space and click ‘fit to screen’ it doesn’t zoom to fit screen, it just fills about 80% as you can see here:

And if I zoom in any more using the preprogrammed zoom keys 1-5, by pressing CMD+= or by using the mouse wheel, the next zoom step zooms in too far. As you can see here:

I’m sure such a simple and essential function must be possible but not sure how it is done or whether there is some setting I have incorrect or something.

I don’t know what zoom levels you’re showing in your 2 images so I can’t be sure, but this seems like a result of Aseprite not allowing zoom-in intervals that don’t scale cleanly (1x, 2x, 3x, etc).

In my opinion viewing pixel art that has been scaled at a non-whole interval is kind of useless, not to mention distorted and misleading. What makes it essential?

If you haven’t already, you should set your screen scaling to 100% in the settings (and increase UI scale as desired), otherwise your zoom intervals are actually displaying in increments of 200%.

It’s essential because it’s a standard feature to work on something that fills your screen…otherwise I may as well buy a smaller monitor. I don’t see why it would be distorted either. Not sure what that assumption is based on.

Why would pixel art be distorted if it were scaled UP at non-whole intervals? Photoshop can zoom to full screen without any visible artifacts whatsoever.

Setting screen scaling to 100% doesn’t fix anything.

How do you fit a 10x10 checkerboard of pixels into a 15x15 area of pixels on your screen without it blurring or alternating pixel sizes? That’s what 150% zoom requires.

How does photoshop zoom to 100% full screen with no artifacts?

They’re not as noticeable with non-pixel art but they are there. Show me a pixel art piece scaled to fit your screen and I’ll show you where it’s blurring pixels or displaying irregular pixel sizes, depending on how they scale it.

This is 32x32 zoomed to 3871.88%. I can’t see anything at all wrong with it.

Measure the size of your pixels. They vary between 39x39, 38x39, 39x38, and 38x38.

Admittedly not very apparent at a glance at this scale, but go back to my unanswered question of displaying 10x10 pixels in a 15x15 area (or even 25x25, or 35x35) and the problem is much more stark and obvious.

And please note that I’m only presenting my opinion when it comes to the necessity of this kind of scaling; the math behind this however is not an opinion and is likely the reason Aseprite was designed this way.

Here’s a question, are you gaining anything by viewing your art at 3871.88% as opposed to 3800% or 3900%? 3800% would fit in your screen and not have any distortion without being that much smaller. Wouldn’t this be preferable?

Yes it’s not noticeable at all unless I ironically zoom into my computer screen analyse it with a magnifying glass. I think you’re confusing scaling and zooming - this is not kind of final output product, it’s just workflow. There’s literally nothing wrong at all with this for working on this as art.

Yes I’m gaining something - it’s nearer to me. Otherwise what’s the point in having zoom at all.

Indeed, and I would find this workflow quite irritating, especially in the range of 100-1000%. No point in arguing workflow preference though.

I think that’s an unfair reduction. We’re talking about the difference between 3800% and 3871.88%, not the difference between having zoom and none at all. :confused:

By your own admission, there’s no distortion visible to the human eye, you had to literally measure the pixels to be able to tell. Without being able to measure, you’d have no idea the distortion was even there

It seems particularly problematic in Aseprite because it’s not like it’s zooming to 95% or something, it fills more like 75%-80% of the screen.

I’d only worry about distortion in the final product for my game. While working, however, this 100% unnoticeable distortion surprisingly doesn’t bother me.

I just measured it - its only 75% of the screen…

If it were the difference between 3800% and 3871.88% as you say that might be acceptable, but we’re talking about huge gaps here…

Some kind of compromise might be ideal. Going past 1000 the distortion doesn’t really matter when you get off of the 100% intervals. But something like 120% or 150% is quite noticeably distorted to me, no pixel-measuring necessary.

Designing an elegant solution to this that doesn’t confuse the user would be a challenge for sure :slight_smile:

If you don’t like the distortion and that particular level then just switch it to whole interval zoom…it’s not exactly rocket science lol. Considering most of the time there is zero visible distortion it would make sense to have it set to non whole interval zoom for full screen by default.

Can you post an example of this distortion?

Right, but ideally the user shouldn’t have to worry about being at zoom levels that look visibly distorted.

I don’t want to have to notice that I’m looking at distortion and then click a button to fix it. It’s not “rocket science” but it’s not a good user experience either. I already don’t have to worry about any of that with the way it currently works.

Granted, it seems you’re not having a good user experience anyway :joy:

Re: examples

Here’s a 32x32 checkerboard at 100%
image

Here at 200%
image

And here at 150%
image

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They won’t since it’s not visible to the human eye. You have the button ‘fit to screen whole interval’ and ‘fit to screen’ next to it. Use whichever one you dare use. Again it’s not rocket science.

32x32 looks grey, the larger sizes look like checker boards. Denying people the option to zoom to non whole intervals it’s just assuming they’re too stupid to use the software. Have you seen people complaining about distortion with the full screen zoom in photoshop a lot? There must be some reason to deny people this ‘dangerous’ option.

So you’re telling me I can’t even go into options and turn on non whole interval zoom?

I’d have no problem with it being an option you can turn on.

I didn’t mean this discussion to get heated; it’s something that I happen to enjoy comparing viewpoints on :slight_smile:

And hah, maybe checkerboards were a bad example! Here’s a pixel font:

1x
image

2x
image

1.5x
image

By the way, I don’t view photoshop as some golden standard that everything should be compared to. Aseprite is deliberately not photoshop and this is why people use it.

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It’s not heated, we’re just discussing something. I don’t know why with pixel art you’d ever want to zoom to just 1.5 or 2? If I zoom a 32x32 piece to 1.5 it fills like 5% of my screen. I guess if you’re doing a tileset or a font as you say, it might be different though. But if you’re doing any kind of character you need to zoom in as far as possible.

I think all you can say is that you have a point but so do I. Surely both options are needed? I’ve literally never seen anyone working on art in photoshop but with their canvas only filling 75% of the screen…or any other art program for that matter. People often use Photoshop for pixel art (like Marco Vale) since it has various advantages, but it’s not the gold standard as you say.

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Hi there :wave: We have plans to improve the zoom to any scale (actually we have plans to improve the whole rendering of sprites), as you can see the different pixel sizes are not noticeable in some cases, and anyway we should have an option to lock the zoom to natural pixel sizes (so both modes should persist in a future version).

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Oh wow that sounds amazing. I only just noticed your reply.

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