How to reduce a shot for an avatar ? without ruining the photo

gus

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Nikolai

Most likely
...you have Preview check box checked in JPEG setting dialog. Set quality to 6..8 and uncheck that darn Preview box, and your 100x100 will be well under 6..10K.

Lemme know if it does not work.

gus

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Nikolai

Well then

gus wrote:

nup...that made no difference at all

PS - File - Save for web. Try this one.

gus

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Nikolai

Oooooh, you're talking about fuzzy...

gus wrote:

Nup...still fuzzy.

I thought you were concerned with the size.. Sorry. Wrong direction. Dunno.
Did you use bicubic smoother?
You can also try step-wise downsizing, like make it 90% each time.

Richard

gus wrote:

Nup...still fuzzy.

Maybe you are expecting too much out of 70 pixels wide. It doesn't look too bad to me after looking at the original. There's an awful lot of detail that simply has to get lost when you reduce the size drastically. Is it just this image that's giving you problems or are there others as well?

gus

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jfriend

My try

gus wrote:

I am doing some avatars for a local bike club & their max size is 100 x 100 pixels & 48k for an avatar. Im aware that it is butchering the photos info but i can seem to get it right.

Ive done this heaps before with other shots & never had a worry with the result still quite sharp. I keep getting a poor quality ...im reducing a full 20D jpeg down to 100 x 100 pixels at 70dpi...if i change the dpi to higher i get the same. What am i doing wrong guys ?

Original...reasonably sharp


reduced image...looks way too fuzzy...37 k at 73 x 99 pixels

This is as good as I can get it:


You don't have larges or originals enabled, so I had to make it from the watermarked medium size. First I cropped to square without resampling. Then, I resized to 100x100 use Image/Image Size in Photoshop with Bicupic Sharper as the resize algorithm. Then I did a light smart sharpen on the result. Lastly, I saved it as a JPEG at quality level 10. In the end, there just aren't very many pixels to show this type of small detail.

At this size, the image could probably also benefit from a boost in contrast with an S-curve before you shrink it as that will also bring out some more detail.

gus

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jfriend

One more with color and contrast enhancement
One more with the same process as the previous one, but I also enhanced color and contrast and lightened the face a bit before downsizing.

Malte

I line with John's advice, I think cropping away all but the very essential is necessary with so few pixels.

Malte

TylerW

there's no mystery behind the idea that just because something looks fantastic in a full frame, full color image, doesn't mean it'll look crunched down to a 70x70 avatar. Look for images that are already very graphic and very easy to read via the basic shapes present in the image. Those are the ones that will make your best avatar. The trouble you're having with this one is that the rider's hersey isn't in very high contrast from the tree-lined background. If his jersey was red, you'd have no trouble at all.

Also, photoshop's image downsizing tool tends to apply a fair amount of gaussian effect to images on their way down. Hit it with a bit of Unsharp Mask to bring those details back once you get it to the proper size.