Resolution conflict in photoshop

Thanks for all your input. It's made me realise that the issue is actually with the workflow and how I’m receiving the images. The pet photo was 540 x 960 at 72 dpi as I’m receiving them via social media. When the background is removed, the quality is reduced even further. For it to work, I need the original high res photos.

Check the resolution you are taking pictures on your Smart Phone.  It might be at a low setting.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 and my wife a Samsung Galaxy Edge S6..... both of our cameras take fine photos and we can even take photos in RAW format.

It might be that you need to first adjust your settings on your cell phone.

If you are using an older cell phone to take photos, then the resolution might not be that great.

Look at your setting first on your cell phone's camera.  Then let us know what the settings are set to.

clared93509311  wrote The issue I'm having is that the offer icons are losing quality when they are reduced in size to fit my graphic. Ideally, I would create a larger graphic than needed in the same ratio, but the pet images aren't high res enough for that - taken on smartphones.

I would think that any smart phone camera would capture more pixels then any Icon image the you create would have.  Icon files dimensions in pixels are usually quite limited.  They do not have the many pixels to store fine image details.  Therefor ICON image do not have a lot detail you will not see lines of text in a normal icon image you would need to have an abnormally large icon to be able to read lines of text in an icon you need to have lots of pixels to display fine details like text or stray hairs. 

clared93509311  wrote The same icons have been used before for social media banners by a graphic designer so I know it can be done.

Hi

I could be wrong but I'd imagine the original icons were created in a vector based application like Adobe Illustrator.