Myra….
It wouldn’t make sense to be able to specify pixels at this point. You’ve already noticed that this selection box is about Document size, i.e physical size. Pixels are just numbers and the document only takes on a physical size based upon the number of pixels in the image and the resolution you choose.
You can specify a new document in terms of pixels. Are you trying to make an existing image have a specific number of pixels?
Colin
Yes, say I wanted to either crop my image or resize it to 720 x 480 in preparation to view it on a TV screen, how would I do that?
Thanks for your time and willingness to share, myra
Hi Myra…..
Cropping and resizing are really two different topics although there can be some similarities.
Firstly a basic crop will just allow you to select an area and throw away the rest of the image outside the crop box.
Resizing will allow you to retain all your image but change the pixel dimensions….. for example reduce the image to the 720 x 480 you need.
If you want all of the image then you can use the Image > Resize > Image Size menu.
In the pop up window as you may have noticed you have the Document Size ( width/height/resolution) and Pixel Dimensions. There are also some check boxes at the bottom left.
If the Resample Image is unchecked then the Pixel Dimensions are grayed out and you can only alter the width/height/resolution but these are locked together….change one and the others automatically change as the ratio between them is fixed.
This is normally tried first to get the print dimensions right…so the width is set to the paper size and the height/resolution is changed automatically. For print the trick is to ensure that the resolution stays above 200ppi. For screen this can be as low as 72.
In your case since you’re not printing but want a pre-determined pixel size you should have the Resample Image box checked. Now you can change the pixel dimensions to suit and you’ll see the physical size of the document change accordingly.
Beware though….resampling is a process that has to either invent or throw away pixels so there is some risk that the quality of the image may get worse. However, provided you don’t over do this Elements is very good at producing a good image.
If you think you want to crop some of the image away, let me know and I’ll do my best to describe how you can do that.
Colin
Colin
Myra, in addition to Colin’s information, there’s one thing I’d like to add. If you want to resize an image for monitor or TV viewing and do it by pixel size, use Save for Web – on a copy, of course. That will let you choose the size in pixels. Or, if you have a folder of images that you want to resize, you can do that in Batch processing. It, too, has a place where images can be resized in terms of pixels.
First off I want to thank Colin and Beth for their time and effort.
I never noticed that if I check the resample box I could change the pixels in the Pixel Dimensions section. (My face is red!)
But Colin, would you mind very much telling me how to crop to specific pixel dimensions in case I need it in the future?
Thanking you in advance, myra
Myra, I’m confused about whether you want to crop a picture or resize to specific pixel dimensions.
If you want to resize, then using one of the two methods I posted will do the job much more quickly and easily.
If you want to crop, you should do that via either the Crop tool or the Rectangular Marquee tool while the image is open on your desktop.
The Image>Resize>Image Size box does aid is resizing when you want to change the physical dimensions, but it’s not the most efficient way to do that when you are after a specific number of pixels of width and/or height.
I’m not trying to drag this discussion off topic, but as an aside, I was wondering if there is any real advantage to downsizing an image for the purpose of printing. I’ve always heard that the optimum print resolution was between 255 and 300 (Colin says anything over 200.) If I have a picture that has a resolution of 350 (high, but not a lot high) should I worry about changing the resolution before printing? Even though the print won’t be visibly better at the higher res, is there any reason to reduce? What if the picture is a lot high, say 600? -Dave
I don’t generally downsize just to get to that "magical" number. My 3MP Canon digital produced an image that happened to be 330ppi if I wanted a 4 X 6. I just printed it that way. The only time I ever downsized one on purpose was when, for example, I’d cropped another image, and it wound up being only 300ppi. If I wanted to print them both at the same time, I downsized the larger one to save trips through the printer.
You might be able to kind of answer your own question about how high is too high by doing a couple of experiments. A very high res photo will usually take longer to print, because of all that additional data. If your printer is fast, then you won’t care. If you find you’re sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting for a picture to print, then maybe that’s the time to try reducing the resolution.
My current camera is a 7MP, and the res is 510ppi for a 4 X 6 from it. I haven’t printed many pictures from it yet, but I bet I wind up downsizing those. I can toss out a lot of image data and still wind up with a good print, so I might be inclined to do that for the sake of speed. I also got a new printer, so maybe I won’t, either. 🙂
Myra…..
As you’re beginning to see there are many ways to acheive the same end and different folks have different ways of tackling the same problem.
I’ll respectfully disagree with Beth about the resizing of pixels using Image Re-size as being not efficient…whatever efficiency means in this context.
I frequently want to paste images from Photoshop into Powerpoint slides which are destined for screen presentation. The quickest way for me is using Image Resize because I can just type in 800 or 1024 pixels width and the jobs done. This works for me as in most cases I want all the image not a cropped portion.
Now to cropping….
When you open the crop tool you will see an option bar appear under the menus. On the option bar you will see boxes for width/height resolution and a drop down box which allows for pixels/in or cm.
Let’s start with the boxes empty. You can enter a width/height in pixels and leave resolution empty. When you drag the crop box over the image it can be any physical size on the screen but as soon as you commit the crop (press enter), the result will be an image of the required pixels. BUT…what’s happened is that the image now contains the pixel dimensions you put in but the cropped area may have had more or less than this. In which case Elements does the same thing as resampling…it invents or throws away pixels…in which case watch out for loss of quality.
If you do the same with a physical dimension e.g 6in x 4in then you’ll only get the pixels you’ve enclosed (no resampling) in the crop box but the resolution will change.
Let’s leave the resolution box for now.
So you have two choices…..use Image > Resize with Resampling and just enter the pixel dimensions you need or use the crop tool and enter the pixel dimensions.
And just as a teaser you can also crop with the Selection tool which also has some advantages.
Colin
Dave…..
Conventional theory usually states a number between 200 to 300ppi for a good quality print.
The first debatable point is how you define the quality. You can do this by trying different PPI and comparing the results and it will depend on how critical you are. I’ve shown some people prints made at 72ppi and not heard anyone say ‘that’s not very sharp’ until they see a 300ppi version.
The second point is that it may also depend on the printer. I’ve heard that some printers prefer specific resolutions…I think I heard 360 for some Epsons. Others tell of stories where resolutions of fractional PPIs have caused problems.
From my own experiences on a Canon i850 and Selphy 500 I’ve seen prints exceptable to me which have left the PC at anywhere from 180ppi upwards, in some cases to above 700ppi.
Colin
Thanks Beth and Colin…
It seems to make sense that unless speed becomes an issue, there’s probably no good reason to downsize. I’m sure I’m not as critical as many, but I do see things in prints that others would look right past. I think Beth’s right about just experimenting. It never occurred to me that there might be a "magic number" that was different from printer to printer. FWIW, I’m using an Epson Stylus Photo R800.
Now, to all, I apologize for what ended up being an attempted hijacking of this thread. It seemed like an okay idea at the time, but I should have known better than to try to "interject" a subtopic. I’ll start a new thread next time. -Dave
Colin, I’m sorry but when you specify a width or height in the crop options you are telling Elements to crop to specified inches not pixels. So if my photo is 1536 pixels wide by 2048 pixels high, and I want to crop it to 480 x 720 unless I divide 480 by 72 and 720 by 72 to get inches and then enter the inches in my option bar, I don’t understand how it will know to crop to the pixel dimensions I want.
I understand inches I don’t know how to crop for pixel dimensions.
Well, Colin, as long as you’re respectful, you can disagree with me and I won’t mind. 🙂 One of the things that give us, at times, a love-hate relationship with this software is that often there is more than one way to accomplish the same task. Some people gravitate toward one when another person finds that method cumbersome and chooses a different way.
When Myra said she was resizing for TV, I made an assumption she’d probably be working with a number of images instead of just one or two. That’s the kind of situation in which I would put them all in a folder and let the computer do the work – while I went off and did something else! It also a convenient safeguard to make sure none of the originals are accidentally downsized.
But, like I said, variety is one of the things we love about Elements. Well, we love it most of the time anyway.
Myra,
My method when doing what you want to do is to use the retangual marquee selection tool with a fixed aspect ratio (whatever I need my final picture to be) to isolate the part of the picture I want, then edit>copy, then file>new from clipboard. This puts my selection in a new document and leaves my original alone. Then image>resize the new document to get to the desired size.
Works for me.
Colin, I finally understand! I put number of pixels in the crop options and it works!!! I thought it would only take inches. Thank you so much for your patience.
Also thank you Karin Sue–your method works too!
And Beth I will most certainly use the batch method because you are right, when making slideshows, I will be doing more than a few.
Once again, thank you all for all your help, myra
Beth….
Not only do different folks approach things differently some of us have different versions not just of Elements but the full Photoshop as well which again brings in more variables.
Perhaps you could detail to Myra how to batch process in Elements to acheive what she needs as it’s not something I do.
Colin
Hello. I’d like to jump in here as I’m experiencing a similar problem with resizing.
I have a logo that I need to insert into a skin in RoboHelp WebHelp Pro. I need to resize (smaller) the image while maintaining high resolution (using PS Elements). I’m creating the Help system for a new web-based product and a lot is riding on this. Company logo needs to be crisp.
So far, I can either make the image the size I want (with lousy res), OR change all the other things suggested (resampling, document size percentages, pixels) in the applicable Elements Help topics and still have a large image when it comes into the skin. (I have to assume that the image dimensions I entered did not actually take effect in the latter case.)
Thanks for answering. P
Depending on how small the logo is when resized down, you may have difficulty keeping it "crisp". Some logos are sufficiently complicated that you just need a certain number of pixels to render them crisply. That being said, you should be able to do something decent with Elements. Tell us about the process you are using to resize. How big is the logo image, and how big do you want it to be?
Thanks for the quick reply, Mark.
I started with a jpg, cropped it tightly, and converted to a gif, because the jpg wouldn’t appear correctly in the skin at all.
The gif is 799K px (891 x 306) and 3.564 x 1.224" at 250 res.
When I reduce (with proportions constrained) the height to .5", the resolution becomes 612 and the width adjusts to 1.456" in the dialog, and the RULER changes to reflect the new size. But the image itself does not change size on the screen and is still huge when added to the skin.
What am I doing wrong? P
Forgot to add that I have Resampling turned off. P
You need to match the resolution of your logo to the resolution of the skin.
Since this is for a web application you should be working in terms of pixels rather than inches. When you reduced the size and the resolution changed, the number of pixels remained the same, that is why it is still too big.
What are the pixel dimensions of your skin? Use that to determine the necessary size (in pixels) of your logo.
Ok- so the first issue I see is converting to GIF too early in the process. That should be the last thing you do. And by checking resampling off, you are preventing the software from doing what you really want it to do, which is to render your image in a smaller format. So what I’d do is find out how large in pixels you want the resulting resized logo to be. Then use resize with resampling enabled to make the logo image the right size, and save that as a .jpg with a different name. Then save it as a .gif. And don’t save changes when you close the original image file (unless you’re already working on a copy.)
One more thing- when you figure out what the size of the logo should be in pixels, you’ll have one dimension that’s real important and one that’s somewhat less important. For example, the height may be critical, but the width may be something that can you can manage. In that case, when you do the resize (with resample enabled) ALSO enable the "keep aspect ratio" box, then enter the critical dimension (like 50 px) in the height box. The SW will figure out the other dimension for you.
Changing Image File Sizes.
I am a new user of Photoshop 7.0. I want to change JPEG image files that are now about 1 meg in size to below 100k. How do I do that?
Ira Micay
Ira,
I don’t know about Photoshop 7 (this is the forum for the Photoshop Elements application), but this can be easily done in Photoshop Elements 2 or 3 via the "Save For Web" feature.
For advice specific to Photoshop 7, go back to the list of forums and select the one named "Adobe Photoshop & Adobe ImageReady" for your specific platform.
HTH,
Byron
To reduce the size in Photoshop 7 you can simply use the Save for Web feature … just as we would in Elements.
Try File>Save for Web
The use a pixel size of around 800 for the longest side
and use the quality slide to reduce the size to an acceptable level
Wendy
