Graphics Zone - Image Reductions

BONEFISH

Improving the quality of image reductions

by John Hilton, Adult NetSurprise

If you reduce an image or photograph from large to small in one go you are certain to lose a lot of the clarity even if you sharpen it afterwards.

The trick is to reduce its size gradually and in stages as shown below. The large photograph on the left is 308W x 395H pixels in size and for demonstration purposes it's been reduced down to a thumbnail measuring 60W x 77H pixels.

At each stage of the process you need to sharpen the picture a little (in Photoshop use the Unsharp Mask set at an amount of 30%) and then look to see if there is an improvement. Sometimes sharpening will improve the clarity while at other times it will not, it can make the clarity worse.

In the six stage example the photograph was sharpened after stages 1, 3, and 5. If you compare the result with the one stage example you can immediately see the difference in quality, the girl's hair is sharper and has retained more detail, her mouth is clearer as are her fingers. Overall it's of a much better quality.

This technique will prove invaluable whenever you need to reduce the size of an image!

Thanks go to cvproductions for the use of the photograph.