photoshop question

I

ipam45

Gawd
Joined
Jul 14, 2006
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i need to make a picture very very small...32 x 32 to be exact. but whenever i change the resolution to that, it makes it very blurry. i think i should be scaling it down instead of just changing the resolution. i knew how to do this a long time ago but i forgot...please help!

thanks

ps: this is in photoshop cs3
 
How big is the original? 32x32 doesn't give you much in the end.

But what I've done to make clearer thumbnails of pics is step it down in increments, adding a bit of unsharp masking with each decrease in size.
 
If you're going to 32 pixels by 32 pixels, at 72 dpi, you'll have a very small box. If you zoom in and make the box larger, it'll look very blurry on your screen, but if you view it at 100% you'll see it as it will display on other screens for the most part.
 
All good answers.

But the fact of the matter is - at that 32x32 scale - your pic will be somewhat blurry, no matter what (especially if were talking about a photographic image, and not vector graphics or something).

That being said - a couple more tips:

Make sure that you are not scaleing an image that is in the "Index" color mode - make your changes in "RGB" instead (scaling an image in "index" will cause significant pixel "clumping").

In addition - besides using unsharp mask or another sharpening tool - you could play with the levels or curves of your final sized image, increasing the contrast across the image. Highly contrasting pixels tend to "pop" an image this small into somthing that reads like the original. This is essentially what unsharp mask does, except hat UM tends to localize the effect only at the areas of highest contrast (where, say, shoulder and background meet).

If you're saving to an indexed image (gif or png) - make sure your outputting it with "256 colors selected".

If your saving to a compressed type (jpeg) - make sure its "high" quality. (tho id recommend the indexed option first)


Hope that helps
 
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