Software to resize images?

[jamdr]

I need a freeware or shareware program that can resize images as well as Photoshop. Obviously anything from AppleWorks to Graphic Converter resizes images, but all of them I've tried really distort the image and make all text unreadable. In Photoshop, though, the resizing always looks really good and everything is still readable. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[jsw]

I've never had an issue with Graphic Converter - how drastic a reduction or increase in size are you doing?

 

[jamdr]

Nothing very major. My image is about maybe 300x200 px and I want to reduce 50%. It looks really bad using graphic converter. Take a look. Maybe it's because the original has anti-aliased text, but photoshop does a good job with this.

 

[jamdr]

Here's what photoshop did, and this is after the original had already been jpeg compressed. It looks better from the original file, but this isn't bad either.

 

[jsw]

I get very similar results using Photoshop Elements 3.0, Graphics Converter 5.4, and Gimp 2.2 (Gimp is free, GC is shareware, and PE3.0 is ~$80). I found I could improve things by cleaning up the image ahead of time and by using different scaling algorithms - which all three apps support. I think your problem is that you've got an image with essentially three colors (black, white, yellow) and a fair amount of noise, plus you're reducing to a very small size, given the font sizes in the image.

 

[jsw]

Here's what photoshop did, and this is after the original had already been jpeg compressed. It looks better from the original file, but this isn't bad either.

That is better. All I have is lowly PE 3.0. I'm not sure you'll get great results with anything free, though, but I got Gimp and GC to work fairly well (upgrading to GC5.5 as we speak).

 

[jamdr]

Thanks, I'll give GIMP a try. That needs X11, right?

 

[jsw]

Thanks, I'll give GIMP a try. That needs X11, right?

Yup. But, FWIW, quality isn't much different than GC.

 

[MisterMe]

Nothing very major. My image is about maybe 300x200 px and I want to reduce 50%. It looks really bad using graphic converter. Take a look. Maybe it's because the original has anti-aliased text, but photoshop does a good job with this.

It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

Reducing an image by 50% is trivial. If you did something silly like scan the original image at 75 dpi, then it GraphicConverter or any other image editor should not have a problem.

 

[jsw]

It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

In this case, the free tools don't produce the same quality results. Any craftsman will tell you that better tools produce better results. They don't blame their tools because they buy better ones. But it doesn't sound like jamdr needs to invest in Photoshop just for this task.

 

[MisterMe]

In this case, the free tools don't produce the same quality results. ....

It would be more proper to say that the craftsman using the free tools didn't produce the same quality results.

 

[Westside guy]

ImageMagick is a free, command-line-based tool that will handle a lot of different image transitions - including resizing. It works very well.