Downsizing Art

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Does anyone know of an easy way to downsize graphic files that are very high resolution without ruining the quality. I was thinking of printing them out, and then scanning them in at a low resolution.

Thanks.

Jerry

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Boy, if you’re talking about concerns about quality, printing and re-scanning surely doesn’t seem like the thing to do! What exactly do YOU mean by “downsizing?” If you’re talking about changing the SIZE of a graphic, like from 1152×864 to something smaller, I can’t imagine that you’d “lose” much if anything in the way of quality. Can you tell us a little more specifically about what you’re trying to do?

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Boy, if you’re talking about concerns about quality, printing and re-scanning surely doesn’t seem like the thing to do! What exactly do YOU mean by “downsizing?” If you’re talking about changing the SIZE of a graphic, like from 1152×864 to something smaller, I can’t imagine that you’d “lose” much if anything in the way of quality. Can you tell us a little more specifically about what you’re trying to do?

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What graphics program(s) do you have? Most of them can resize an image to a smaller size. This will throw away information; you can’t turn 1200 pixels into 600 pixels without losing anything. However, for the purposes of screen display of photographs, this usually is acceptable. For other types of images (e.g., screen shots containing text), downsizing can be devastating to image quality. You might be better off re-creating those using smaller windows, etc., if you are working on screen shots.

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What graphics program(s) do you have? Most of them can resize an image to a smaller size. This will throw away information; you can’t turn 1200 pixels into 600 pixels without losing anything. However, for the purposes of screen display of photographs, this usually is acceptable. For other types of images (e.g., screen shots containing text), downsizing can be devastating to image quality. You might be better off re-creating those using smaller windows, etc., if you are working on screen shots.

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As others have said, it’s important to know the intended use of this image. Under most circumstances, the damage to images is much greater when trying to enlarge (resample) the image, not decrease the size. And I also agree that there seems no point in printing and scanning the image. Why would you want to digitize an image after printing that is already digitized to begin with? I don’t get it. The image should be completely usable for nearly any purpose as is.

Generally speaking, when downsizing (resampling) the image, the most noticeable effect on the image is a blurring, so some add’l sharpening is usually required. If using Photoshop CS, just use the resample image with “bicubic sharper” setting when resizing and this usually gives good results when making the image smaller. If using an older version of Photoshop, use the “bicubic” resample setting and apply some sharpening manually.

Hope that helps.

Bob

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Bob:

Thanks.

I found an easy way to do it in Fireworks. I don’t have CS. I can reduce the resolution of the TIFs so that the number pixels for width and height match exactly what I want. When I put the PNGs on the Web page, they look fine. Whatever I had been doing before made them look craggy and broken.

Jerry

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Bob:

Thanks.

I found an easy way to do it in Fireworks. I don’t have CS. I can reduce the resolution of the TIFs so that the number pixels for width and height match exactly what I want. When I put the PNGs on the Web page, they look fine. Whatever I had been doing before made them look craggy and broken.

Jerry

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As others have said, it’s important to know the intended use of this image. Under most circumstances, the damage to images is much greater when trying to enlarge (resample) the image, not decrease the size. And I also agree that there seems no point in printing and scanning the image. Why would you want to digitize an image after printing that is already digitized to begin with? I don’t get it. The image should be completely usable for nearly any purpose as is.

Generally speaking, when downsizing (resampling) the image, the most noticeable effect on the image is a blurring, so some add’l sharpening is usually required. If using Photoshop CS, just use the resample image with “bicubic sharper” setting when resizing and this usually gives good results when making the image smaller. If using an older version of Photoshop, use the “bicubic” resample setting and apply some sharpening manually.

Hope that helps.

Bob

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