Pixelated Text and drawings in Photoshop

Hello All,

First off I am very new to photoshop. I think I have made a simple settings mistake but for the life of me I can not find out what I have done wrong.

I am trying to add some simple text to an image, but I noticed that all the text is pixelated (I am not sure if that is the world). The edges look jagged, it looks like a raster image. I was under the impression that text in photoshop is vector. So I am not sure of what is happening. Have a look at a screen shot to understand what I am talking about. I have uploaded the image to http://i43.tinypic.com/2ujl4cg.jpg

After which I tried to create some shapes. But all them also look pixelated/jagged. You can have a look at what I am talking about by going to http://i43.tinypic.com/awb3va.jpg

I tried to create the circle with the Ellipse tool as well as the the marquee tool and tried to fill it. But both the methods gave the same result.

I am not sure what is happening. Any one have any idea how I can fix this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Dave

You've got the zoom set on 600%.

Thanks for the reply PaavoPerkele.

But the zoom should not be a problem right. Text in Photoshop is vector right, so no matter the zoom level it should not look pixelated. Or am I missing something here.

If you look at the second image the circle I get with the marquee tool is also off. So I am not sure if this is a zoom issue or am I wrong?

The text is in vector, sure, but it'll render sharp only @ 100% or less. You can, of course, blow text up as much as you wish without losing quality. Photoshop is a bitmap program.

Thanks for that information.

But just to confirm does a similar thing happen with the marquee tool? If you look at the following screenshot http://i39.tinypic.com/2mwdv9e.jpg the circle is not perfect. I used the marquee tool to create the circle. It should be a perfect circle no matter the resolution right?

Any idea why that is happening.

Thanks in advance
Dave

It should be a perfect circle no matter the resolution right?

No, it will be a perfect circle only at 100% or less. Photoshop isn't a vector program, which means that the quality of the picture is directly related to the canvas size (and hence zoom).

PaavoPerkele is absolutly correct. If you're designing for the web, then don't zoom in past 100% since that's the only way people will ever view the images.

If you're designing for print, and you want your type to stay crisp, ensure to save your file as an EPS and check "include vector data". But even with this in mind, Photoshop will still show the "vector" type as rastered past 100% viewing.