I've been struggling with the quality of photos after having resized them. Plain and simple, anyone can resize and image in Irfanview - it's a basic simple tool, but images lose sharpness. I've been using several other photo programs for resizing photos, but they pretty much all made them look worse. As for sharpening afterwards: it makes the photos look so ugly (edgy and zig-zags appear) that I generally keep the resized blurry version. Any tips, ideas on how to reduce image size and still get a "sharp enough" image at the end? (basically I'm trying to re-size large DSRL images to 400 or 600 pixels wide and the quality suffers tremendously)
There are two simple rules in image resizing. If you want to make it bigger you will always get lower quality. If you want to make it smaller you will always get bigger quality. Picture in it's original state has 100% quality. Quality increases if the picture size decreases, and vice versa. But I can help you - try to Google 'image scaling without loosing quality' and 'photoshop plugins'. Think 'Topaz photoshop plugin' has some kind of filter that could help you.
I agree with the others. Photoshop by itself without any plugins can do an excellent job resizing your photos. Now adding some extra job using some specific plugins will just remove bad details in your photo. Photoshop tip: Just create a blank label using the same resolution and analogue dimensions as the image you want to resize (make the blank layers 100px (always keep the analogue dimensions) bigger in width and resized it analogically in height as well and just drag and drop your image. The you will need to resize it a bit and then trim the image and that's all.
Way to overcomplicate the job. Admittedly I'm using a very ancient version of the software but it's a simple image size change and then save.
With photoshop is just Drag and Drop in the dimensions you need. You just need to keep the analogic dimensions and nothing else.
For sure. But i was speaking more generally. For example if you had to resize the same photo into more sizes without knowing the sizes. It is basic rule to keep the analogical dimensions.
I think quality decreases when you resize, because it all gets pale/blurry... with simple small programs, at least. Haven't tried in photoshop, though. Normally in a simple program like IrfanView, the photos become blurry when shrunk, then sometimes I sharpen them, but usually not, because it creates a zig-zaggy look...
I agree with the two rules you posted. Just to clarify when are you making the images smaller you also make the details less visible. So if the image is low quality is much better if the image become smaller. If you have high quality image then growing them you will be able to see the details better and believe me because i have tested it will be marvelous. Remember that growing the image or resizing the image should be in some limits and the analogical dimensions (e.g 3:4) should be in the picture. Photoshop is one of the top 3 programs out there. You should test it.
Right, details become less visible when shrinking the images. I am exclusively interested in reducing size. No way I would increase. That almost never works.
Personally if i would like to reduce the size of the photo i use the photoshop. I am resizing the image to smaller dimensions and in the same time the size is reduced. Now regarding if i want a transparent image i use the .png extension if i want with packground then i use .jpg extension as it will reduce the size more. At the end there is an option in photoshop to choose the quality you want. Reducing the quality the size also is reducing. Usually at level 9 or 10 (from 12) also keeps high quality photos with details.
I use microsoft office Word 2007, first you insert the picture into the new document then the picture tools will show. It retains it's resolution quality after resizing the original file
I've been using gimp for years, try it! You can re-size as well as set the quality for jpg or png you want finally. It is handy and small and Free!