preparing images for upload - tips

[Henry Tenby]

One of our new members was having problems preparing his images for upload to the site. His images were about 3500 pixels wide direct from his SD card.

The problem was his images were looking very soft when uploaded to the site. So I set out to solve the problem, and my findings below will be of interest to other people using this website.


I first processed his 3500 pixel wide image through photoshop with one level of sharpening and then uploaded it .. have a look:
http://www.airlinefan.com/view_photo...hotoid=5539000

Kind of looks soft, which is strange because the source image from the camera is tack sharp.

I then did maximum sharpening on the source image in Photoshop and uploaded again... have a look:
http://www.airlinefan.com/view_photo...hotoid=1276108

Notice that the maximum sharpening upload is tack sharp. It looks fantastic!

His images were coming off the camera fine but because they are so large in size, they needed to have maximum sharpening in Photoshop when they are reduced in size down to 1500 pixels in width.

So to get the pin sharp image you need to do a maximum sharpening in photoshop AFTER you reduce the image size down to 1500 pixels width.. and then your images will be tack sharp and ready for upload!

[King F. Hui]

Funny thing about Photoshop is when you reduce the image size from a large size (3500 pixels) to small size (1024 pixels) in one step you'll lose resolution.

Here is my trick:
1. Fix the photo (level, colour saturation, contrast, and horizontal level) first.
2. Reduce the image size to 2000 pixels by whatever pixels.
3. Sharpen the image.
4. Crop the photo to 1024 x 700 pixels (this image size will fill a 15" monitor in XGA resolution).
5. Review the photo in "actual pixels".
6. Save the image to file and make sure the file size is as close to but not over 2MB. Use different level of compression.

[Henry Tenby]

I was completely unaware that when you reduce from a huge size down to a small size image in one step so much quality is lost in the one step process.

Although King's suggestion works too I think novices might find my suggestion a bit quicker.

My suggestion is that people give both methods a try and go with whichever method gives their particular images the best results.