What is a good program to resize images with?

[budbiss]

I've tried PSP and Photoshop, yet both seem to make the images very jaggedy. BTW, I am shrinking down images. Anyone have any ideas?

[troels nybo nielsen]

Have you tried irfanview?

[fwordboy]

i agree, irfanview really is the best at making images smaller (and its free!)

[edward607]

I have a photography site and have been using xat.com's Image Optimizer. It's not freeware, but it works very well and produces very crisp compressed and resized images. They do have a free 30-day trial period.

[bruhaha]

JPEG Wizard (from pegasusimaging.com) does a nice job --only for jpeg's obviously-- for just $29 ($69 if you want to run batches).

[normaldude]

Yeah, I would recommend first trying IrfanView since it's free.

[irfanview.com...]

[Robino]

Photoshop can do this just as good as anyone IMO.
What steps did you take in PS?

Maybe you could do something different to achieve a better result.

[edit_g]

Photoshop resizes images just fine. Some steps to take to ensure that it goes well: make sure the image proportions remain the same, use the "image size" tool and make sure you're working from good originals.

[LegsEleven]

PSP has several enhance facilities which should be able to resolve your problem.
Q. Are you scanning original prints and then shrinking them.
A. If so, any scanned pictures need to have things removed from them especially if they have come off a printed page e.g. magazine, book and photographs.
Use the moire pattern removal facility in Photoshop to start. After you have removed the moire pattern use the JPEG atifact removal and any of the other enhance facilites needed. These will clean the images ready for shrinking.
Lastly you will need to set the size and resolution of the cleaned image. The favorite web image resolution is 72 dpi. Just pop the image into PhotoShop and shrink to your desired size. For a thumbnail image you will end up with a file that will be in the region of 4kb to 23kb depending on how small the thumb is going to be. Sorry if I have given you more information than you asked for.

[troels nybo nielsen]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, LegsEleven. Good start. I have to say that Irfanview is the only program that I have tried to use for resizing, but I would certainly regard it as a natural demand that newer versions of large commercial programs have this feature on a decent quality level.

[kyussa]

Photoshop is perfect for resizing images. Try zooming your image one step larger or smaller after you've scaled it and you'll find it should be of good quality, considering you started with a larger image and shrunk it, rather than the other way around.

[Chocolate Brownie]

Paint Shop Pro is good.

You occasionally get free versions with computer magazines.

[divaone]

i don't personally know of ANY image editing program, large or small, that won't resize an image. but the resizing of most images, sm to lg or lg to sm, requires more than a one-click shrink-and-go.

refer to the reply by legseleven and use the available functions in your program of choice. most will allow for at least sharpening of images. many programs offer other options as well for photo/image enhancement ( << keywords to search for) - focus, blur, average, despeckle, remove noise, remove moire, etc.

irfanview is about the quickest loading, lowest learning curve and nicest small and FREE program out there. its great for many purposes. or search for a prog that boasts a specific purpose of image optimization ( << keywords).

[storevalley]

I've tried PSP and Photoshop, yet both seem to make the images very jaggedy

Most common reason for this in my experience lack of color depth. Make sure you increase color depth to 16 million colors before resizing your images ...

[sun818]

ThumbNailer by Smaller Animals - a very flexible tool (i.e. lots of options) and command line options so you can include in batch jobs, in cases where you may want to FTP images to your web site.

[Shadows Papa]

I have Paint Shop Pro and like it. It's not expensive and does a lot of things quickly and easily that others don't do.
I was having some issues with PSP, not terrible, but decided to try another app - Fireworks. I find that image quality off my scanner is much better - for example, using PSP I scan fabrics. It leaves a weird pattern on SOME fabric colors/patterns. Like a wavy line or wavy pattern that's not in the fabric. I find I never get that in Fireworks. I also get in in Photoshop!
In fact, color and pattern quality in Photoshop isn't as good as in Fireworks, but Fireworks is much more basic - you can't do as much with it as Photoshop.
I find Photoshop is more for "experts" and leaves many of us scratching our heads. I also don't get as good a quality of scans with it.
PSP is a good overall app - I recommend it. Fireworks is good and fast and easy, not as many features, but I can scan fabrics all day and never ever get those weird patterns. I thought it was the scanner at first, but the same thing scanned with the same scanner within seconds - no weird patterns in Fireworks. I can scan, resample, rotate, and put the reference numbers on the images in seconds in Fireworks and always get a good clean small image. Basics, sure - but it does the basics very well.

On any of the above - if you are getting "jaggies", it's not the apps! The best app for resizing line drawings, etc are those that handle vector graphics. Our logo is a line drawing with many straight and angled lines - nothing could handle resizing that - it had to be done with a vector graphics app. Took some doing. PSP could simply not handle it. Jaggies up the wazzu.

Shadows Papa

[racer_x]

After reducing the size of images they can lose their sharpness. After you have reduced the size try using the unsharp mask filter on them. Despite being called unsharp it actually sharpens the image, the name refers to the photographic technique from which it originated.

If you are reducing the size of the images by a large amount (more than 400%) try doing the reduction in steps. Resize the image by 400% then apply the unsharp mask, repeat until you reach your desired image size.

[sidyadav]

Use PictureIt! 2000 - no lack in quality and can be resizable to any size.

Sid