Resizing for Ap or Web - without losing details or quality? Compress or resize? Help needed.

[Kerrie]

Hi All

Can someone please help me and tell me how to resize to maintain quality.

When I try to resize by reducing pixels ( 4288 down to 1024 example) my photo seems to shrink dramatically on the screen and then quality seems lost ( and at beginners stage I need to keep all I can!) And then worst I still hold 400+ kbs as the size.

How does one maitain a good pic with in small sizing? Like for loading here to AP...250kb with 1024 max.....Compress ? But then it seems so tiny...


any help appreciated

cheers

K

[ameerat42]

Kerrie.
What program are you using to do the re-sizing? Waht What steps in that program?

Have you seen this library article?
Am.

[Kerrie]

Hi ameerat

Im using gimp to pp.....I have windows pic manager too and I can compress to web on that, but it shrinks it tiny.

Does gimp have a feature similar to the article you mentioned ( I read it). I don't see those drop downs when save it just asks quality.

I guess I can make a new image and choose the sizing there.....my concern is that it seems to lose my pic detail..or is that just my perception and all pic o. Here are the same size?

Cheers for your help

[ricktas]

any resizing is going to affect quality. You are taking pixels away when you reduce from 4000 to 1000. Its just a fact of the way resizing works.

[Kerrie]

Got it. Thanks Rick.

[ameerat42]

I have Gimp 2.6 installed just for..., and it has similar features, though not as comprehensive as those of Photoshop.
Below are two screen shots of how to do it using Gimp. It does not have a Bi-cubic option, only Cubic (whatever that equates to), but that would be the optimum for most "re-scaling", or re-sizing. Furthermore, you have to apply your own sharpening afterwards. Use "Unsharp Mask", settings not exceeding those shown.

The image used went from 5000+ pixels to 1024 pixels. I'm not too pleased with the subsequent sharpening results.

You'll find the Unsharp Mask under the Filters menu.
Am.

1. Re-scaling using Gimp
Gimp-1.jpg

2. Unsharp Mask using Gimp
Gimp-2.jpg

I agree with what Rick said, you lose image quality. It would be better if you could link your pictures from a hosting site, like Flickr, though I use Skydrive, where they are only slightly reduced in size.

[Puzz1e]

There is a reason why the file size smaller when you compress. It will always be a trade off between file size and acceptable quality.

[bobt]

If you'd like a very easy re-sizing program that's free, go here.

http://www.####es.com/ezthumbs/

I've been using it for years, and I enter competitions with images re-sized using this software, and it's always worked well. You can choose the image dimensions and overall resolution quite easily.

Edit ... I just noticed that the software here has found this web address offensive, so if you replace the #### with f o o k (no spaces) it should work.

(Sheesh ...... what the ####s wrong with the world!) 8*)

[Kerrie]

Thank you sooooo much guys! I will give it a go on gimp and see what I get

AP stands for Awesome People

[Kerrie]

Thanks Am....really appreciate your help on this