Reducing Image Size

HM
Posted By
Howard Miller
Sep 10, 2003
Views
183
Replies
6
Status
Closed
Hi,

I am trying to use PE to reduce by a factor of 50% the size of a screenshot image. The image is pretty much a flat colored background with text. The image is considerably degraded by this process. The text is made very fuzzy and almost impossible to read. I have tried all resampling settings and none are adequate.

By comparison, I tried the same process with Macromedia Fireworks with markedly better results.

I find it hard to accept that Photoshop is inferior to Fireworks. Any offers as to what I am doing wrong or how to improve the results?
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JF
Jodi Frye
Sep 10, 2003
In the toolbar>image>image size>resize, leave ‘resample’ off and reduce the image size. This should give you the results you desire.
HM
Howard Miller
Sep 10, 2003
Thanks.. but… Tried that!

Its much worse, you don’t get the "fuzzy" effect, but the characters are now badly broken. It really is as if Photoshop has a problem with reducing the image size.
P
Phosphor
Sep 10, 2003
Howard, what’s the format and original size and resolution of the image you’re working with? If it’s a screenshot, mine does those in JPEG and at 72ppi. That doesn’t give me much to work with, but you might be getting something different. The fact you’re describing the characters as "badly broken" makes me think pixelation. Text is very poor at 72ppi. And, what is it you want to do with this image? There might be another format you could use that would improve the quality. Give us a little more information, and maybe we can come up with a brilliant idea. Or not.

Also keep in mind that Elements was originally designed for amateurs in digital imaging, and Adobe probably had people like me in mind – pictures from my digital camera and scans of old photos. Experimentation has shown Elements is capable of much more, but it could be that since you’re working with text, there IS a program capable of doing a better job. Elements isn’t perfect, just dam good. 🙂
HM
Howard Miller
Sep 10, 2003
I wonder if I am missing the point here. I am grabbing a screenshot of an Internet Explorer window – (I am actually running all this on Linux using Crossover office, but that shouldn’t matter). The screengrabber saves the image in .png format. I assumed that the image grabber will just grab the image pixel-for-pixel, ie, there will be no reduction in quality from that displayed, which is pretty good with quite large characters. However, when I bring up the image size dialogue the resolution is stated at 72dpi.

I want to reduce the images to a suitable size to display in a document (to be printed at 300 dpi). The next step is that I save it as a TIF and import into a word document.

Just getting more confused now! I didn’t want to reduce the pixel dimensions at all did I? I should have increased the resolution to suit the output medium – sigh!
PD
Peter Duniho
Sep 10, 2003
"Howard Miller" wrote in message
[…] I am grabbing a screenshot of an Internet Explorer window – (I am actually running all this on Linux using
Crossover office, but that shouldn’t matter). […]

Just getting more confused now! I didn’t want to reduce
the pixel dimensions at all did I? I should have increased the resolution to suit the output medium – sigh!

You are inserting the picture into a Crossover Office document? I haven’t used that program, but if it’s anything like any normal word processor, the resolution stored with the image doesn’t really matter. It will be used to determine the default size of the image in the word processor, but you ought to be able to scale the image within the word processor document to suit the document as necessary, without changing the number of pixels in the image at all (which is what happens when you resize it in Elements).

The image will go through yet another scaling step when it gets printed, to match the resolution implied by the image size in the document to that of the printer. But that will be done with the maximum possible quality and will produce the best results. Much better than you removing resolution by shrinking the image before the fact.

I want to reduce the images to a suitable size to display in a document (to be printed at 300 dpi). The next step is that I save it as a TIF and import into a word document.

What does this statement mean? You are composing the document in something other than Word, and then creating a TIFF image from the entire document which you then import into Word? If I read that right, that seems counter-productive to me. I hope I read it wrong. 🙂

In any case, it doesn’t sound to me like you need an image editing program at all. Not for what you’re trying to accomplish. Just insert the picture into your document, and then adjust the scaling *within* the document editor so that the picture is the right size relative to the rest of the document. You’ll preserve all of the pixels that way, and the picture will be printed as best as it possibly can on whatever printer you wind up printing on.

Pete
HM
Howard Miller
Sep 11, 2003
Thanks, you are more or less correct.

FWIW I am using Microsoft Word and PE on Linux (clever!) using a product called Crossover Office.

I needed to do some cropping and editing to the screenshots, but I didn’t need to reduce the number of pixels, that was just me being stupid.

I also need to provide the screenshots online. In this case I do indeed need to reduce them (which is how my confusion started I think).

Thanks

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