shrinking photo/dpi gets worse!

[Kari]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but images are supposed to look better when downsized, not worse. I'm using PS 7 on a PC....lately, when I take a photo and use the image size, or free transform, the resulting pic is MORE blurred than the original. I've tried everything...I don't know why it started to do this...any suggestions? It's making my daily work a real pain. THANKS!!!

[YrbkMgr]

Kari,

It depends on the composition of the image. Vector based images will preserve crispness through resizing, raster will not. The most dramatic changes usually occur when upsampling an image, but when you resize down, you are removing pixels, so it is not unusual to see blurring. After resizing, you may have to sharpen your images.

[Colin Walls]

Kari

Why are you resizing? As Tony says, resampling up or down [creating or destroying images] has potential to degrade the image.

If all you want to do is print to a different size, either adjust the PPI of the image [with resampling off] or use the scaling on Print Preview.

Apologies if what I have said is blindingly obvious to you - it is not to many visitors to this forum.

[Mac McDougald]

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but images are supposed to look better when downsized, not worse.

Not necessarily. Assuming you mean downsampling, you are losing pixel
information, so complicated images may suffer. If you mean downsizing and
letting ppi go higher, or combination of downsizing and downsampling to
keep at least same ppi as you started with, generally the quality will be
the same, but you are constraining all that detail into a smaller print
area, so the eye cannot discern all the details as well (and if the print
is quite small you may exceed the printer's capacity to print that much
detail in a small area also).

Mac

[YrbkMgr]

I have no idea why my posts aren't making it. Sigh...

Kari,

Try resizing the image by changing only the Document Size portion of the Image|Size dialog. That should maintain the quality while reducing your actual print size.

Peace,
Tony

[Kari]

Let's see...

There's not much to talk through really.... I've tried:
1) Opening the image file I want to shrink down(say it's at least 200dpi, at 5x6) and going into the image size.... I will change just the document size and leave the dpi the same, I also tried resampling down the document size - letting the dpi increase - then fixing the document size and taking the dpi back down.

2)I've tried both ways in the original document file and then dropped it onto my blank page, and I've tried dropping it in my page unaltered and using the free transform tool to shrink it. I don't shrink it too far, click off, then enlarge again. The resolution of my blank page is the same or less than my picture.

I don't get it either. It's bizarre. A perfectly clear photo that's 5x6 will turn blurry on screen and look blurry when printed when I shrink it. I really noticed it when I had a map the other day...you could read the cities when it was large, but when I shrank it (even keeping the dpi high) you couldn't read the cities anymore.Technically, it should look the same, or better. It used to. I just used 5x6 as an example, I've had 8x10's to 5x6 etc, do the same.

Let me know if that was clear enough. Thanks for your help!! Kari

[Colin Walls]

Kari:

Can you post before and after examples on the Web somewhere?

I'm convinced there is something very simple and basic going wrong here, but I can't see it.

Just a possibility: you might like to reset your prefs [see FAQ] - this often seems to fix odd behaviour in PS.

[PeterK.]

"I don't get it either. It's bizarre. A perfectly clear photo that's 5x6 will turn blurry on screen and look blurry when printed when I shrink it. I really noticed it when I had a map the other day...you could read the cities when it was large, but when I shrank it (even keeping the dpi high) you couldn't read the cities anymore."

It sounds like the problem lies in resizing images with sharp, vector-like elements or text. For continuous tone photos, sizing down wouldn't be noticeable, but with text, when you size it down (or up), the edges take on an anti-aliased effect, which could be the cause of the blurry look. Try resizing down your image with the method set to "nearest neighbour". If that is the problem, nearest neighbour will keep the edges sharp.

[Kari]

Thanks for the tips! Sorry, I can't post to the web....
I'll check out the preferences and try the nearest neighbor selection. I agree it seems like something simple... the only other thing I can think of is I'm on the network at work. Sometimes things they load on there will start messing with my graphics applications....since PS didn't use to do this, and no one else is really experiencing this problem on this board, perhaps that's where I should turn my attention?

Again, thanks for all the help!
Kari

[Bill Lamp]

If I understand you correctly, you are taking photograph PRINTS and resizing them.

This means you would be scanning them in.

From Hamrick ([url]www.hamrick.com[/url]) Scan at a higher resolution then reduce it in the scanning software.

That was NOT a direct quote!

It would work something like this.

Scan your 5x6 at 400 DPI and set the size reduction to 2. This gives a file for print at 2.5x3 at 200 DPI.

I may have the steps a bit wrong and, as semi-legal lunch "free time on the computer" is about over can't duck over to copy the quote. I do know doing that has worked better than a 200 DPI scan and reducing THAT file down in Photoshop.

Bill

[BillJ]

If you are downsizing by a factor of two, four, eight, etc., your downsized image will look sharper than if you shrink your picture some odd percentage like 63% or 41%. This is because the algorithms have an easier time creating 1 pixel out 4 contiguous pixels rather than having to make 1 pixel out of, say, 5.672 pixels.

Notice how pictures opened up in Photoshop look better when displayed at 12.5%, 25%, 50% or 100% as opposed to 33% or 66%. It's not exactly the same thing, but it's similar.

[PeterK.]

When you originally saved out the 300dpi illustrator file to a tiff, did you turn anti-alias on? if so, try turning it off, then size it down with the nearest neighbour option. If the text is still blurry, it's something to do with the printer, not the file. This is assuming that the text is still a reasonable size to read. The whole idea is to have the edges of your vector elements with solid pixels and nothing else.
Of course, if you're creating part of it in illustrator and want the text to be sharp, the best solution would be to print straight out of illustrator, with all the type in vector and the rest of your images as tiffs, then you don't have to worry about blurry text at all.

[Kari]

I'll take a look at the percentage thing...I'll also try the saving out without anti-alias. Really, that was just an example...not all things need the text, it just helped to show that it was blurring. Even photos that are clear look horrid when I shrink them. The map file I had to re-create was because it was a supplied jpeg. I had to shrink it for a powerpoint presentation cover. I wanted the text somewhat clear so that when it was broadcast over a screen it would look nice...but it looked like I put a blur filter on it (on screen and when printing). That's why I had to place it in Illus. and then save that out as a jpeg to insert into PP...and that worked (& printed fine). I should've been able to do it in PS...but it's just not working properly. And since it's something I have to use daily it's getting very frustrating. I thank everyone for trying to help me solve this, but I think it's a bug of some sort...maybe it has to do with a couple of new programs that have been loaded on our network, I don't know. Again, thanks for all the suggestions!! I'll keep plugging away.

Kari

[Unregistered]

your not alone Karl,

I tried a variety of solutions but nothing. Did you manage to fix this issue as i am desperate to sort this thing out!!!

would appreciate any help