jagged line problem

[marzipanlil]

Hello - Can any one help? I have just completed a digital photography job for an inventor who wants to show off his invention on the web. The original file is 30 by 20 cms. The tall stem on the equipment he is demonstrating appears completely straight and about 3mm across the width. When I re-size it down for web use the stem becomes a jagged line. I've got Photoshop 6. Can I salvage this image? Thanks in advance for your help. marzipanlil

 

[SPYDERIX]

Hi,

Have you already resized the image down and saved it, and you no longer have the original at the big size?

If that is true, you might be out of luck. You can't enlarge a raster image without it becoming pixelated. Some 3rd party filters claim the it can be done with fractals but I am very much in dis-belief about such programs, and have tried some that give very poor results.

If you still have an original then your option might be to crop the picture before resizing and isolate the most key part of the image or as much of it the the client wants. Then when you resize down, the picture size in it's entirety will shrink, but the actual image that you are focussing in on won't shrink as much compared to when you were resizing the image as whole.

Also, how are you resizing the image? The best way, I find, is to use free-transform (Ctrl+T) hold shift while grabbing one of the 4 corners and shrink it down. Then press [enter]once you are done or click on the checkmark in the options palette.

Hope this helps!

P.S. - Always backup original images before playing around with them in any photo editor. NATE
design@spyderix-designz.com

http://www.spyderix-designz.com

 

[blueark]

If you have the original file, I would look out for the following before resizing:

1. Check your color mode before resizing (Image > Mode). Make sure it's not set to Indexed Color or the quality of the resampling will be poor.

2. Check your interpolation method (Edit > Preferences > General). Change it to Bilinear or, preferably, Bicubic.

3. Make sure the stem IS straight! The best way to do this is to use the ruler tool. Drag it along the length of the stem. Now go to Edit > Rotate > Arbitrary and the dialog box that appears will have the angle that you drew with the ruler, even if it's only a fraction of a degree. Click OK and you're done. Now that it is straighter, resizing it shouldn't give you as many problems.

Hope this helps!