Re: how to keep the clarity when reducing an image?

When I reduce images from print resolution (300 ppi) to web resolution (72 ppi), I find it works best to do successive image size reductions alternating with mild sharpening. So if I'm starting with an 11" x 14" image at 300 ppi that I want to put on my website, I open the Image Size window and reduce the resolution from 300 to 200, then use an Unsharp Mask filter at anywhere from 10 - 50%. I repeat those two steps to decrease resolution from 200 to 100, 100 to 72, and finally when it's at 72 ppi, I reduce the dimensions to those that I want.

This has given me pretty good results in all cases but one: screen shots. If I take a screen shot, particularly a website with a lot of text, and need to display it at 300 px wide or something small like that, I've found that doing a very minor (like 0.1) Gaussian blur filter BEFORE I reduce it prevents the final image from appearing too pixelated.

Hope that helps!

Kira Woodmansee
Event Coordinator, Boulder Digital Arts
events@boulderdigitalarts.com
http://www.boulderdigitalarts.com