Lightroom 4 zoom

Question

I have recently downloaded LR4 and have yet to have it perform acceptably.  Every time I try to zoom in on an image it will automatically zoom past 100%.  When I then try to zoom out or return to any other size the program stacks multiple images in decreasing size.  Is there someway to fix this or do I need to uninstall the program?

Answer 1

Could you explain more exactly what you mean by "100%"? If you have clicked on the 1:1 option, LR will toggle between that and "Fit" when you click. If you have clicked on another option, say 8:1, LR will be instead toggling between that and Fit.
Some people think of "100%" as meaning: I can see the whole picture - though this is not the convention - something LR tackles with "Fit" and "Fill". These options should work in an obvious way, but if they do not, it may be that LR has not yet generated the needed previews. In that case you may merely see a crude enlarged version of a very low-resolution thumbnail when you zoom in - something that gets replaced with the full detail of the image in due course.
If you are getting multiple images displayed overlapping, that sounds like a graphics display driver problem, would be my next guess - good idea to check if the latest available version is installed. Or your computer lacks the processing power to refresh fast enough, or its graphics acceleration features are not being used for some reason.
If the cropped or actual pixel dimensions of your image are less than that of your display window, then Fit and Fill will never enlarge beyond what 1:1 does; they only reduce. 2:1 would still double the size, 1:2 would halve the size, etc.
The zoom factor options do not give a standard percentage view of the image - depending both on the pixel count of the image and the pixel count of your screen. Those who are not used to evaluating pixels in this way are often slightly shocked by the apparent bad quality, of an image from a higher-resoiution sensor as compared with one from a lower-resolution sensor. This despite being perfectly good in whole-image terms... it is a magnification effect - in the same way that the smoothest surface looks fine under an optical microscope, but like sandpaper under an electron microscope.
Also many people become used to conceiving their image in physical terms (for example, as if it were a print of a certain size in inches) and in that case, they may seek a "print size" zoom. LR does not offer such a feature, because all the images seen are completely output-independent and have no one size assigned to them, of the kind that Photoshop deals in - a 1:1 zoom will always look much larger than such a print-size zoom would.