Resizing Images for Print and Web in Photoshop
A basic function of Photoshop that every new user must learn is how to properly resize your image. Depending on what you want to use the image for will affect how you resize it.
Resizing Image for Print
When you are ready to print an image you need to make sure that the physical dimensions of the image are the size you want. An important thing to note is that any time you resize an image you risk reducing or compromising its quality.
Note: If you every have to increase the size of image you will always diminish its quality and if you are trying to resize an image smaller then its original size any extreme measures of scaling will reduce the overall image quality.
To resize an image for print in photoshop go to image – > image size.
The Image Size window that pops up contains all the features needed to resize your image.
The goal when resizing an image for print is to maintain the highest possible image quality or resolution (displayed in pixels/inch or sometimes dots/inch). Most standard printers either print in 150 or 300 dots per inch and a common practice is to give the printer twice as much resolution as it can handle. To do this insure that the the resample image is not checked and that then proceed to set the width or height of the desired print image. With the constraint proportions box checked the image will automatically maintain its original aspect ratio as to not distort the image. When you typed in the desired width or height of the image ensure that the resolution is still higher then 150 pixels per inch, any less than that and you will begin to be able to notice poorer image quality in your prints.
Resizing for web
If you’ve ever received an image via email from someone who hasn’t properly resized it you may have been surprised to find out that the image takes up more then your entire screen or the image takes to long to load. The reason for this issue is that most cameras are set to take images in the highest possible setting (which is what you want) however this results in image resolutions higher then that of your monitor.
An important thing to remember when resizing an image for web is that you are in fact reduce the images quality. There isn’t much of escaping this fact.
To resize an image for web or email simply go through the same process as above except this time ensure that the resample image is checked. In this case however rather then modifying the physical dimensions of the image we will be modifying the pixel dimensions as the image would be displayed on screen.
A typical monitor’s screen width is betten 1000 and 1500 pixels wide so if you want your image to be about half of someones screen you could resize the image to have a width of between 500 and 750 pixels.
When you have finished applying this image resize if you zoom to 100%. This is the size/quality as it will appear when you send it to a friend or put it online on a typical monitor
I found a software that does this in batch, saved me some time… http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/DanuSoft-Batch-Image-Resizer.shtml
Yeah you can easily do batch re-sizing in photoshop by setting up an action to record all the commands of the re-size you want to do then you can automate it for as many images as you want. I do plan on creating a tutorial for that at some point as well but the students I am currently teaching are note quite there yet.