Beginner Resize + sharpness

Scots_quine

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Joan
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Don't know whether my eyes are deceiving me but when I resize an image down to 1000px on the long side (edit - typo first time round said 100px!), I seem to lose the sharpness. Is it my eyes or is their a reason for this?
 
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Hi Joan:)

Forgive me, but is 100px a typo?
If you are resizing to this size, it will be a tiny image, and when you zoom in, it will indeed look exceedingly pixelated and unsharp.

If, however, you meant 1000px, then (depending on your original starting resolution) this may still be quite a reduction in sharpness.

I would say it probably isn't your eyes Joan, maybe you're just resizing (downsizing?) a bit too much.

Just my thoughts.:)
 
Sorry, sorry, yes a typo!! I meant 1000px on the long side!!!
Starting resolution is 300 pixels/inch and I don't change this.
 
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The ppi figure (pixels per inch) I believe relates to the output resolution, and is for if the image is to be printed.
Don't quote me on this....I'm not an expert on printing!
It doesn't necessarily relate to the input (or original) resolution.

With a long side of 1000px, and thence a short side of 666px (assuming a 3:2 ratio) you're still looking at a low resolution image of much less than 1 megapixel (0.666mp)
This will certainly appear noticeably softer.

Again, I'm no expert on such matters, but I've done my fair share of messing around in Photoshop!:giggle:
 
Thanks Gareth. I was just noticing that images I had put on F/book (perish the thought) looked quite 'soft' and not as crisp as the originals. Same with the ones posted on the 52 as well.
 
I am happy to admit I am lost and confused.
 
I use Elements too and do any sharpening as the last step before saving at the final use pixel size.

I generally resize down to 1200x800pixels, either by resizing via the image tab or by cropping to it when reframing and/or straightening horizons then use the Unsharp Mask in the Enhance drop-down menu, using a standard (for me) threshold of 0 levels and a radius of 1 pixel then using the slider to get as much sharpening as necessary to improve the shot while trying to use as little as possible. Finally I save at as high a quality as possible to be under any file size restriction there might be, meaning that (hopefully!) any host will not need to do anything to the file to degrade it further.

Any adjustments I do to a file are made to a copy rather than the original file and I always try to do the whole edit in one sitting since it doesn't take many open/save cycles to degrade JPEGs even at level 8.
 
Sorry, sorry, yes a typo!! I meant 1000px on the long side!!!
Starting resolution is 300 pixels/inch and I don't change this.
The 300 ppi relates to print output alone and has no bearing on how the image is seen digitally, which relates purely to the actual pixel numbers in image width and height.

Solid advice from Nod above, and if you haven't invoked any sharpening it might be worth experimenting with.

But I wonder when and how you're viewing the variously-sized images? Because after any downsize if you magnify them to get them bigger on the screen like they were before, then they'll obviously look less sharp.

So define your terms a bit more.

A downsized image will contain less detail - something's been thrown away - but if viewed on the same screen (without having been posted somewhere first as Martin just hinted), and not enlarged, should look subjectively more or less as sharp as before the resize.
 
I, too, believe Nod's advice to be most helpful since he's using the same editor as you are. I have found different editors give different results when enlarging or downsizing. And, I think droj is quite right when he says it shouldn't matter before or after resizing. It could be that different editors handle the procedure differently with different outcomes. This is not a contradiction to droj. Rather it is a sad refrain to the actions of editors comparatively. This is why I think Nod's advice is best. His editor is the same as yours.
 
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