there must be some trick... because photoshop can view the images... you see, we want to be able to see the whole image [zoomed out of course] and be able to see at 100% as well [obviously this would just be a small region of the image]... so i'm going to have to make a smaller image from the big image... i guess for 1/8 size i could just create a new image.... and use every 8th pixel value horizontally and vertically.... and then depending on zoom value... 1/4 size would be every 4th pixel or something... but it seems a bit inefficient to me to have to create a new bitmap from the large data every time you scroll/zoom.... i dunno.... i think of something hopefully...