Does Resampling / Resizing An Image Affect Its Quality? [With Image Examples & Free Actions].

The question was recently asked – does reducing the size of an image affect its quality? I couldn’t find anything on the internet with image examples (I’m sure it exists somewhere in the depths of the internet; I just couldn’t find it!) so I thought I would make my own so we can see for ourselves what happens when you reduce the size of an image (****I need to disclaimer here that technically when you “reduce the size of an image” to make it smaller for contest submissions or website submissions, you are physically changing the number of pixels in your image (the Pixel Dimensions) and this is called resampling.. resizing is something different and has more to do with printing and the document size than the [pixel] size of your photo, but for all intents and purposes, I’ll speak colloquially, and most people just say resizing when they mean reduce the pixel size). I will upload a full res image, along with 3 additional images which have been reduced in size. Perhaps you already know what happens to reduced images and are about to click that X on the top of the screen – instead, you may want to consider scrolling to the bottom of the page where some nice, free resize/sharpen actions lurk :).

Anyway, the best way to compare each of these photos is to open a new tab for each photo (to do this you can hoover the mouse over the photo and click the scroll wheel or you can right click and select “open in a new tab”). By the end of the comparison you should have 5 new tabs in a row starting with high res and moving towards smaller res. When you get to the last 2 images the photos appear smaller.. to see how they look you may need to zoom in. To do this hold down the “control” key on your keyboard and then scroll your mouse wheel up to zoom in (and then down to zoom back out).

^ Full resolution image. The image is 3744×5616.

^This image has been reduced to 600×900. 600×900 is considered the “ideal” size to post to Facebook and web [update:  within the last couple months of June 2014 Facebook’s ideal image size has changed to 960 or 2048..] It is highly recommended to resize and sharpen on your own because if you upload a huge file to the internet, the internet will automatically reduce the size and quality.. if you do the job on your own, you retain control over how the photo looks. Although compressing it like this makes it lose sharpness so it is recommended to do a little bit of sharpening to anything that has been reduced this amount. Personally I run a high pass filter @ .5 – 1.0 and it’s perfect! While it is easy to do this manually I created some actions to speed up the process of resizing and sharpening. If you are saving in Lightroom there is a simple box you can check to sharpen upon export.

Here is the same file size – 900×600 with a .5 high pass filter applied to it.. it is definitely an improvement from with no high pass filter and looks almost identical to the original file despite being significantly smaller. 600×900 is the perfect size to put on the web without worrying about how the web will change your photo. (If you want a free high pass filter action, I put a download to one I made at the bottom of this page!).

^This image is 267×400. You can very clearly see how much it has been degraded at this point so we already have our answer that reducing the size of an image does impact how it looks and degrades it.  If you cannot tell then hold down “CTRL” + scroll the scroll wheel of your mouse up.. this will zoom into the image so you can see the quality up close.

^This has been set to 134×200. Though uploading that is probably overkill at this point since the point was already made in the above photo :).

I’ve created 2 files I want to share with everyone.

The first one includes 4 actions – Two of these actions reduce your file size to web-sized files (2048 on the longest side) and the resolution to 72 and the other two actions reduce the size to the same size but also apply a .5 high pass filter to the image which helps sharpen it. When you reduce the file you are squishing pixels on top of each other and losing information.. that’s why a little bit of sharpening is ideal.

Please note this actually “resamples” the image but I am using colloquial language and most people call it resizing :).

Resize Horizontal
Resize Vertical
Resize and Sharpen Horizontal
Resize and Sharpen Vertical

You can download this free resizing and sharpening action here.

The second one also includes 4 files. All of these only sharpen images, regardless of their size. The smaller the image is, the smaller HPF you’ll want to apply. For full res images I usually run HPF 3-4. For 600×900 I run at .5. If you want above a 4 you can run HPF 4 and then HPF 1 (totaling HPF 5). Anyway these are the actions included in this set (HPF stands for High Pass Filter).

HPF .5
HPF 1
HPF 2
HPF 4

You can download this free sharpening action here.

Of course there are countless ways to do resizing and sharpening, this is just one of many 🙂 and there is software designed to assist you in resampling the image without hurting the image quality so if you need something like that, programs like that exist!

-Christine Ann

Duluth Senior and Family Photographer
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Photos From 85mm 1.2L Lens.

Which lens you decide to use on your camera has a big impact on how the photo turns out. A big contendor in the photography world for people who are very invested in photography is the 85mm 1.2L lens by Canon. This is the first professional level lens I invested in and I am very fond of it :).
The first thing you have to decide when picking a lens is if you want a prime lens (does not zoom in and out) or a zoom lens (has a range of how close or far you can get to the subject by rotating the lens to zoom in and out). THere are advantages and disadvantages to each (perhaps a future blog post topic 🙂 ) but one of the best and most noteworthy features of the 85mm 1.2 lens is that the aperture can reach .. *drumroll* .. f/1.2! The lowest number you usually see on a zoom lens is f/2.8 so this is quite a big difference on the prime, however you do lose the ability to zoom in and out. The f/1.2 is amazing for when you want to get as much light into the camera as possible and also if you want a very small depth of field (meaning only one thing will be sharply in focus and everything else will be blurred).
The f/1.2 is so sensitive that on my full frame sensor camera body (how far 1.2 takes you depends on a handful of factors including your camera body), if I focus on someone’s nose, their eye will be out of focus. It’s a very very narrow depth of field and very unforgiving for in focus images! There is a learning curve to harnessing this power. I would not recommend using any new equipment at a shoot that you haven’t practiced with in advance. YOu will probably get some out of focus images when you start out with this lens. I try not to go to 1.2 anymore, personally. f/2 or higher is usually ideal but if there is low light or if I want a certain look I will bump it down lower.

Anyway, I wanted to make a blog post showing image examples of photos taken on the 85mm f/1.2L lens so people could take a look and maybe it could help people make more informed purchasing decisions.

I do need to explain that I reduced the image size significantly to post to the web. Standard web size is 900×600.. the originals are around 3800×5700 so they don’t reflect the same quality as they do out of the camera but I hope it gives a good idea.. especially since the originals are better :). If you would like to see a full resolution version of anything just ask in the comments! I am happy to post!

Anyway, without further ado….

^f/3.5

^f/2.8

^f/1.8

^f/1.2 – wide open!

f/1.8

^f/1.4 – close to wide open :)! If you’re shooting this low you must nail the focus spot!

^f/2.5

f/1.4. I was able to take a photo with one fairly dim light on @ 1.4.. this low aperture also created a very nice bokeh effect on the Christmas tree.

^f/1.8 (This lens is great for Christmas lights!).

^f/2

^f/1.8

f/1.6. Notice how narrow the focus is.. the arm is in focus and his entire body is blurred.. there’s about a foot between what is in focus and what isn’t. If the aperture were higher (around f/4+) the arm and body would both be in focus.

^f/1.8

f/1.8. Loving how blurred the background is! Notice how even the front of the scarf is blurred.. 1.8 is not a very large depth of field.

f/1.8

^Here’s one at f/1.2 – this is as low as it can go. I am going to do another blog post soon zooming in so you can see the eyes are in focus but even the nose is out of focus. It still looks okay zoomed out but if you zoom in you’ll see how sensitive the focus is.

^f/2.8

^Wide open at f/1.2. To do this shot over I would have used a higher aperture since her hair is blurred out but I still love this photo :).

^Another photo taken at f/1.2. I’m trying to include a lot at 1.2 since a lot of people are curious about what photos like at that aperture.

f/1.8 portrait

^f/1.4

^Here’s a shot taken at a higher aperture of f/4. As youc an see.. still plenty of lovely bokeh :).

^f/2.2

^f/2.2

f/2

^f/2.2

^This is a full res version of an image taken at f/1.2 – click on it to see full detail.

To see zoomed in versions of the photos to see how the depth of field looks up close at f/1.2 check out this article.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!

-Christine Ann
Duluth MN Senior and Family Photographer Website
Duluth Photographer Blog
Duluth Senior and Family Photographer Facebook Account

Telephoto Distortion and Perspective and How It Affects Your Images

Guest blog post from Christopher Fisher – my husband and occasional second shooter for large groups and weddings :).

Telephoto Distortion and zooming with your feet

Photographers often talk about “zooming with their feet”. If they are using a fixed lens or their telephoto lens and it cannot capture the size of subject they desire, they just move [with their feet] closer or further away from their subject.  To the new photographer, they may not realize that zooming with their feet might compromise the composition of their photo.  While the subject might be brought to size, the background will look significantly different.

This difference is due to an effect called telephoto distortion. A human eye (or a camera) is a small fixed point to which an image is projected. This can be visualized in the below diagram:

While a tree may be several times the size of a person, the image of a tree is focused into a single point:  the human eye or camera lens. If the person walks closer to the tree, the subject appears larger. If the human being walks away from the tree, the subject appears smaller.

Look at the different figures. In the first figure, only a small section of the tree is visible. In the second figure, the entire height of the tree and more can be seen. Let’s see what each figure will see from the eye’s perspective.

Now let’s add a second subject:

-Post by Christopher Fisher

-Christine Ann Photography
Duluth MN Photographer Website
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