Help resizing bitmaps

[nathanpacker]

Hey everyone. I'm working with a logo for a little business I'm doing a website for and all they gave me was a .bmp image. I need to make it smaller, and I'm using Adobe Photoshop. I'm constraining the proportions and everything, but when I resize it, it always ends up looking crappy. I can understand why it would do this if I'm making the image bigger, but smaller? Here is an example you can see.
Thanks.

p.s. If this is a double post, I apologize. I remember posting it last night, but maybe didn't hit the submit button or something, because I can't find it now.

[nathanpacker]

Well, I just found an eps file of the logo the business gave me. So that problem is resolved, I can resize that eps file easily.

My problem now is that I'm trying to use this logo in an image as a header image at the top of the web page. But the logo looks pixelated unless I make the size of the image larger than 50K or so. I need to get the image under 30k, but every time I do, obviously the quality goes down. The picture quality isn't as noticable, but the logo is solid colors. So how the heck do I make this logo look decent? I'm saving it as a jpeg. I created a set of them for you to look at from lowest quality to best, you can see it here. Problem is, the lowest quality one is the file size I would like, but it looks like crap.

Which one is acceptable for a website? What would you do? I just want to know how people get such good quality images on their sites while keeping the size down. I really want this to look professional, not some amature job, even though that's what I am.
Thanks.

[roryt]

You could try doing it with a gif but that probably looks even worse. But you can try a png file. When you select save for web in photoshop all you need ot do is select png-8. This should be smaller and a good quality image. You could also try 24 bit.

When you say other websites have good images but with small sizes this is because they require(mostly) less colors if they are logos or general graphics than yours does because you have a photo in the background. Therefore they can be saved as a gif and are often smaller than their jpeg counter part.

I hope this helps

[iamthwee]

>I really want this to look professional, not some amature job

I totally agree it looks very beginnerish. I would think about a complete redesign.

[roryt]

>I really want this to look professional, not some amature job

I totally agree it looks very beginnerish. I would think about a complete redesign.

I don't think he was refering to the quality of the graphics as a whole just the quality of the output file. I don't know though.:eek:

You may want to think about getting rid of the photo in the background if you do go for the redesign iamthwee suggested.

[iamthwee]

Yes well in short, with a design as outdated as the one he has, i.e. a horrible italic font styled to be pretend handwriting etc, you ain't gonna get a professional feel.

Fact.

[roryt]

Harsh, but true.

Nathanpacker, don't take this as an insult take it as a good bit of advice and make sure you listen to us!

[nathanpacker]

Harsh, but true.

Nathanpacker, don't take this as an insult take it as a good bit of advice and make sure you listen to us!

Of course not, I wouldn't have come for advice if I didn't want to get ripped to shreds. I agree about the logo, it's way outdated, and not very pretty. Unfortunately, that's the businesses logo, and I can't change it. So I guess I have to work with what I've got.

I am seriously thinking about dropping the image, and just doing the logo by itself against a plain background. Problem is, it wasn't the image that was making the file size large, it was the logo, which confuses me even more, because it is just two colors. You can go to the main page, which is just a placeholder right now, at www.importautoclinic.com. Anyway, I really hadn't worked on that whole image header thing for long, it wasn't set in stone or anything, so a redesign isn't a big deal. I just started working on it the other day, and really don't even know how I want to do the site still. Thanks for the advice!

[iamthwee]

Using the Gimp, I managed to autoscale it without losing readability.

13kb file.

[roryt]

I never liked the GIMP so I decided I would try and beat it with photoshop ;). I managed to get a gif that is less than 6kb. Obviously perfect quality. I can tell that iamthwee is probably gonna come back with a gif that is about 2kb now.

You could also go for my png file which is slightly smaller still. They might be worth using. I would stick clear of the photo on the background, you want to make the website professional and so just look at any pro website and guess what you notice...

[nathanpacker]

Wow, now it's the competition to get the smallest file size. Those files look great guys. Anyway, when I get back to the redesign, I'll let you know. And yes, the background image is gone.

[MidiMagic]

You need an alias-smoothing function in your size-changing function. This makes the cogs varying shades of gray, which to the eye looks like a smooth curve.

I have done it with Corel Draw and PhotoImpression 3. Other programs should have this.

One trick which works is:

1. Resample to higher resolution.

2. Change the image size.

3. Resample to desired resolution.

[nathanpacker]

You need an alias-smoothing function in your size-changing function. This makes the cogs varying shades of gray, which to the eye looks like a smooth curve.

I have done it with Corel Draw and PhotoImpression 3. Other programs should have this.

One trick which works is:

1. Resample to higher resolution.

2. Change the image size.

3. Resample to desired resolution.

Thanks, but I was able to figure it out with the previous posters replies. I was able to get it down to about 5k and it still looks great! But thanks for the reply anyway. Guess I should have come out and posted that I had it resolved.