enlarging with out photo destortion

[Blelisa]

Hi, I am trying to make a header in Fireworks, the back ground of the header is a flag, however when I stretch the pic I get degradation on the photo.
any way to solve this?
thanks
Lisa

[john_k]

If the image being stretched is a raster/bitmap image, then some distortion of color must take place. If you enlarge by a factor that is a whole number, you will see the best results. That is, if you enlarge from 100x150 to 200x300. The next best option is to enlarge by a common factor. So going from 100x150 to 124x186 would work well. At any rate, if you lock the aspect ratio when you strecth the image you will minimize the impact.

I don't think we need to get into the details, but this happens essentiallially because your graphics program must create color information for the additional area.

You will always get better results from reducing a large image. That's because the graphics program doesn't have to invent color information, it just has to make good decisions about what to cut out. So if you have access to the original, large version of the image, that is your best route.