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Pixelating when down-scaling


M

Mads Hildebrandt

Well-Known Member
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Hey guys
How can it be, that when I save an image from the net to use in PS, that that image gets extreme pixelated and looses detail when I'm scaling it down to fit my background? My example: I've got a lake as a background and want an eagle to fly over it. I find an image of an eagle on the net, download it, open it in PS, cut it out and extracting it to the lake-image. Now the eagle is way too big, so I want to scale it down. I grab the corners of it and making it smaller, but now the problem occurs with the pixelating and stuff. How can that be? Thanks in advance.
 
Just 'Bicubic'?

If so try 'Bicubic Sharper'.(or any of the others except 'Nearest Neighbour').....its meant for 'reduction' but of course like all the others it has its limitations.

By how much are scaling this image down?

Regards.
MrToM.
 
I've tried the different kind of methods, but none of them seems to do anything better. I'm scaling it way down as the eagle is the size of the whole screen and I need it to be very small, like an inch on-screen or so. But it seems to look worse when I just scale it a bit down. I just saw the image I downloaded is 1280x800, is that too small a resolution?

On a side note, how do I constrict the proportions so that when I grabbig the corners and pull inwards it contains its proportions?
 
Mads Hildebrandt said:
...I'm scaling it way down as the eagle is the size of the whole screen and I need it to be very small...
Click to expand...
That could be your problem, scaling is never brilliant at the best of times but even so you should be able to get something reasonable.

Can you post the images in question? It would mean we could experiment with it to see what would be the best solution for you.

You can attach zips file in the same way as images....just ignore any warnings you may get about file type.



Mads Hildebrandt said:
...On a side note, how do I constrict the proportions so that when I grabbig the corners and pull inwards it contains its proportions?
Click to expand...
Yes.

Use the normal modifier keys....Ctrl, Alt & Shift.

Holding SHIFT will constrain proportions but experiment with Ctrl & Alt as well....and combinations of.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
The best downsizing results I get by doing this in 3 or 4 steps.
If your image is 4500 pixel, change the size to 3500 pixel. (First step).
Next step 2500 pixel, next step 1500 pixel, next step 500 pixel. Whatever size you need.

As MrTom mentioned "Bicubic sharper" is a good method for downsizing. Sometimes I apply a little "unsharp masking" in between the steps.
Try it out.
 
Guys, thanks for help so far.

The images I use are just some random from a google search, am I allowed to upload them to this site without breaking any rights?

I'm not going to use this exact project for anything other than practice, but I would still very much like to learn what's going on.
 
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