A Sharper Image when downsizing?

[TonyW]

Was doing some playing with resizing pixel dimensions and found a curious difference between PSE3 and PSE4.

When resizing down using resampling, the recommended method is to use the Bicubic Sharper option. I recall trying this a while back in PSE3 and not noticing any difference vs Bicubic. I tried in CS2 and did think I saw a difference so I repeated the experiment in PSE4 and was surprised to find it appeared to work better than PSE3 (and matched the CS2 result).

Also I noticed that resizing pixel dimensions in Save for Web seems to use the Bicubic option in both PSE3 and PSE4 so you can get a sharper "Save for Web" image in PSE4 by resizing the pixel dimensions first using Image Resize and selecting Bicubic Sharper. How this compares with resizing and then using the USM filter I haven't yet tried.

If anyone's interested here are the comparisions - PSE3 and PSE4 showing the original and Bicubic, Bicubic Sharper and Save for Web downsized by a factor of 5. Of course it may all be my imagination from staring at the screen too long ;) the differences are fairly subtle.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/10LDWltz1pQwsmxZcqg1dfnm6I7X81_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=10LDWltz1pQwsmxZcqg1dfnm6I7X81)

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1ytMtnGeyUSlBt7TqQchJbm1SsL5Iy_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ytMtnGeyUSlBt7TqQchJbm1SsL5Iy)

Tony

[karen donnybrook]

Tony,

There is definitely a difference, isn't there? Thanks for doing the experiment.

Karen

[GaryK]

Tony

Thanks for the comparison.. sorry to say, I only noticed it in the upper right one.
Maybe I should put my glasses on :D.

[TonyW]

Gary: I was just testing your vision :D . There isn't a lot of difference but I do like sharp images and I always wonder what the best workflow is to downsize for the web and keep the image as sharp as possible.

Tony