Photo size vs. quality

[tivoli]

I have 2 questions:

1. I don't understand the theory behind resizing photos. I assumed that if I were to resize a photo downward to say 600 x whatever, that there would have to be a loss of quality when viewing it on the web. I have since seen some very very crisp/clear/detailed photos in that size. Is that right - resizing downward does not affect quality/clarity/sharpness in the photo when viewed on the web (other than making it smaller)?

2. I'm new at this and thought that some photos I uploaded to pbase were not downsized at all by me (they were from my Olympus 3030Z camera, and now I have the Canon Digital Rebel) but when I click on the properties, the sizes come up as if I did downsize them. Am I not remembering that I did so? I thought for sure I did not realize about using up too much space in my account, yada yada.

Thanks so much.

[sheila]

Hi Susan

1. I never upload original sized images for three reasons. The larger the image, the more time it takes to upload. Secondly, it takes up more space out of your allotted space and thirdly, the larger the image, the more likely it is to get nicked! I upload images no larger than 640 pixels at the longest and resize to 200kb - I do this through Photoshop 6. Resizing images through PS should not degrade the image too much - you would hardly notice on a monitor. Always duplicate the image rather than resizing the original. Early on the in piece, I neglected to do this only to find that someone wanted to buy an image from my gallery but I only had the resized image as I had not "Saved as". Lesson learned! If you take a look at my gallery, you can see that the images are sharp even though they have been downsized a fair bit!

2. From looking at your first image (nice shot of the roses) this was not resized. You can see the size of the pic in the "original" screen. It was 2045 x 1231. It depends on what image you are opening - small, medium, large or original to see the size in the Properties.

Hope this answers your questions.

Cheers
Sheila