Photoshop Ninja
Expert Photoshop tips and tricks for designers and photographers since 2005
Keeping your images sharp when resizing down large images
Make sure you make the best of your images when resizing them down.
An often missing element of creating top quality images in Photoshop is sharpening. This is even more important when you are resizing very large images down to much smaller versions, in particular in the range of less than 25% original size. You will certainly find yourself in this situation if you are resizing images for the Internet from high resolution print quality images.
If I am having to resize images this much, I will tend to do it in two or three stages. Resizing straight down to the small size will result in a loss of sharpness that is difficult to get back. So I would resize to around 50% of the final desired size and run the image through the Unsharp Mask filter at quite low levels – around 50% amount, 0.5 pixels, 0 threshold, usually applying this filter twice. I will then resize down to the final size, and run it through Unsharp Mask again.
Sure, when you resize the image you can use the ’sharpen’ option, but I prefer to have more control over my sharpening… and you should too! Just be careful not to apply too much Unsharp Mask as you can get unsightly halo’s appearing around areas of high contrast in your image. The best way is to use the ‘Lab Convert’ technique as outlined in this tip.
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Written by Jonny Allbut - freelance graphic designer
Last modified: 5 March, 2009 (18:55) | First published: 23 February, 2009
Filed under Techniques - Other, Techniques - Web No Comments »
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