Great Technique: Resize to Poster

[Larry Rutledge]

I came across a great technique for resizing small photos into poster sized prints. The best I can tell, this technique originally came from Jim DiVitale a Photoshop User columnist.

The trick is to use Bicubic Smoother resampling and to never resize more than 10% at a time.

First, open the image you want to resize. Then click Image | Image Size, make sure "Constrain Proportions" and "Resample Image" are both checked. Set "Resample Image" to "Bicubic Smoother".

Next, change the unit measurement to "Percent" and type in "110". Then click Ok.

It's a good idea to make this an action and assign it to a function key, as you'll want to perform the action several times to get to the final size you want. As long as you only increase it 10% each time, it seems to blow up to poster size without softening or blurring the image.

[Drew Ott]

Sounds cool.

I'm about to give it a try and I'll post my results.

[Drew Ott]

I just tried it out and the picture that I used that technique on was quite a bit softer than a straight convert to the size using just "bicubic".

[Tom Marshall]

I would think it would be smoother. That's not surprising as the more you interpolate the pixels, the softer they would be.

[Phil Brown]

You used to have to do this with Photoshop, but CS2 and CS3 don't need this step by step process - new algorithms introduced in these versions vastly improved their ability to scale images.

Another feature not many people know - in CS2 and CS3, if you convert the image to a "smart layer" you can scale it down and up again as often as you like without any loss of quality - just like a vector diagram in Adobe Illustrator.

To test this - create a circle, fill it with say red, free transform the size of the circle to say 1/8th original size and hit return. Now scale it back to original size - poor quality badly pixelated.

Now start again with a new circle, then right-click on the layer and "convert to smart object". Scale down and hit return, scale up to original size - no loss of quality at all.

Phil

[J.R. Hudson]

I found great results with Larry's advice

Amazing

[Larry Rutledge]

Phil - Thanks, I should have said this was for pre-CS2. Thanks for the heads up on the Smart Objects, I have CS2, but didn't know anything about those ... will definitely have to check that out.

[dory_breaux]

Or if your lucky like me and have PZP2 (photozoom) you can just use that ...