Participating Frequently

Question

Resizing image to smaller now is blurry

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 31, 2022
7 replies
11479 views

Hi there I'm new here yet I have been using photoshop for years and now I'm finding myself with something that had never happened to me before. Usually when I resized a image, jpg, to smaller size it went fine.
But now I make images smaller and it turns out blurry and tbh Idk what to do to fix this issue...

please help

thanks in advance

Cristina

macOS

J

John Scott24770323jxn5

Participant

You're not cucu Crispuchita. I'm having the same problem. I'm trying to make thumbnails of a photo for a website and every time I shrink it, it comes out fuzzy. I've been using photoshop since the 90s and I don't recall downsizing ever being an issue for resolution. Enlarging a photo, sure, but this is new to me as well...and it sucks.

D Fosse

Community Expert

@John Scott24770323jxn5

Downsizing is resolution. The more you downsample, the poorer the resolution, by definition.

That might not necessarily be a problem as long as you view it at native size. A low resolution image will be small, but otherwise look fine at that size. But you can't zoom in beyond 100% and expect all the detail to be there.

J

John Scott24770323jxn5

Participant

I'm a moron. My photoshopping skills are rusty. After I reread the comments and realized I was trying to view a small image then blown up, I was able to correct my mistake. But thank you so much for the prompt reply!

Zesty_wanderlust15A7

Known Participant

Tidbit on the side...
IMO, people on hi-res screens have to develop more care when sharpening. Let's say they use "90ies sharpening" with Unsharp Mask. It may look fine on their screen with smaller pixels, but the countless people on HD monitors with good eyes may see this...

This sight mostly went away for quite some years (people seemed to have learned better methods), but IMO seems to have returned since 4K monitors came to market. Not a ton, but I regularly see it.

Zesty_wanderlust15A7

Known Participant

Maybe you have chosen one of the softer methods in Preferences (not sure Auto will then select that or Bicubic Sharper...)

Anyway... From reading a lot of nerds, you ideally have to resharpen every time you downsize, so it's good to use the least damaging method — Bicubic (best for smooth gradients) — then apply your favorite sharpening method.
Greg Benz still has a free version of his Web Sharpening panel too, AFAIK. Tons of options out there better than what's available in Image Resize. If you want to keep it simple, maybe try Smart Sharpen instead — it can give a nice result w/o obvious edges (when set to Lens Blur it's actually deconvolution [refocusing], IIRC).

D Fosse

Community Expert

I agree. I don't like Bicubic Sharper, I think it oversharpens, and at too high radius at that, leaving a lot of artifacts. I always use Bicubic Smoother, which sharpens very little if at all - and then run sharpening afterwards. As I said above, my favorite is still the ACR filter, which gives a lot of control over halos and artifacts.

D Fosse

Community Expert

While that's a small image, there's no reason it shouldn't be crisp and sharp.

Do you have a retina screen? In that case it matters where you see the finished result, because all "consumer-oriented" applications will scale the image up to 2x linear dimensions when they detect a high density screen. This includes all the native MacOS apps. This is the industry-standard workaround to ensure the same material can be used regardless of screen technology. Photoshop OTOH will show you the true native size of the image (much smaller).

The point is that such a small image, scaled up, will appear blurry.

I don't see anything particularly wrong with the image as such, but scaled up it will be blurry because of the small pixel size.

CrispuchitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Chris, I do have a retina screen indeed, is there anything I can do to make it sharp and crisp? I'm making my website and the pics are very important in the portfolio as you can image. I use the iMac 24 inch retina screen idk if that matters, but you never know.
or is there maybe an step I can do to improve the quality.

CrispuchitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Sorry I meant D Fosse 🙂

Chris 486

Community Expert

Those settings seem ok to resize. Could you post your result after the resize?

CrispuchitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Chris, here the pic. idk if im doing something wrong or im going cucu XD

D Fosse

Community Expert

So the question is - resize from what to what, exactly? Pixel size before, pixel size after.

CrispuchitaAuthor

Participating Frequently

hi D Fosse please see above,

you guys are fast, I wasnt expecting such a speedy answer from anyone, what a wonderful community.

Chris 486

Community Expert

Hi!

That stinks to hear! We'd love to help and could use some more specific info. can you tell us the step you are taking to resize your image and provide screen shots of your panels and screen so we can look with you on your process? The more detail the better!