Hi-Res Screenshot resizing help

[SPSPilot]

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas of how to keep the quality/clarity (without being fuzzy) of hi-resolution screenshot a program taken at a 800x600 resolution and reduced down to a thumbnail size?

So far I have tried:

1. Reducing my screen monitor resolution
2. Changed video card capture settings
3. Tried multiple screen capture programs and then reducing the image size.
4. Tried Photoshoping the clarity of the images by increasing the sharpness.
5. Tried having MS FrontPage generate a photo thumbnail album.
6. Changed the DPI resolution at the time of capture is taken.

Overall, all these things listed above has come out with the same result which is a small image but looking blurry. If you have any ideas or a possible solution to this problem, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

-SPSPilot

[Twey]

Depends on the sampling techniques used by the program you resize it with: some programs are better than others. Of course, a change in size that big will cause some quite a large loss of quality whatever you use.

[djr33]

The images usually blur it, which, in almost all cases, is a good thing, making the resize more realistic.

I'd say put it into photoshop or whatever, zoom out so it's the right size (but not blurred) then do a screencapture of that (while it's displaying this non-blurred small version) then cut out that part of the image and save.

[sleipner]

The images usually blur it, which, in almost all cases, is a good thing, making the resize more realistic.

I'd say put it into photoshop or whatever, zoom out so it's the right size (but not blurred) then do a screencapture of that (while it's displaying this non-blurred small version) then cut out that part of the image and save.

ummm... or if you have photoshop, you could just do it the proper way, by using the program menu Image> Image Size, when you edit x or y dimensions, it even automatically calculates the other to keep it proportional...

if you dont have photoshop, I'm not sure, but GIMP MIGHT have that feature... if you dont know where to download the GIMP, here http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/, and GIMP-Shop even tries to make the user interface a bit more like photoshop if you are more comfortable with photoshop (such as I am)

btw that link to gimp-win.sourceforge.net is for the windows installer (I'm not sure how many of you besides Twey here run *nix systems)

[djr33]

The question was how to resize without antialiasing (blurring), so the only way I can think to render an image at a smaller rez without the default blurring to adjust to the new size would be to zoom out, then screen cap and use that.
The default resizing tool is fine, but it doesn't keep the crisp look he is looking for.

[sleipner]

as far as I know, it doesnt matter what method or program you use to do it, simply resizing it like that will always result in at least some blurring - I would just toy with how small a resolution you can get it down to and keep an acceptable level of image quality - if theres text in the image and it turns to crap, you might just have to crop that out, if it doesnt happen to be in the middle of the image - if it is, you'll probably just have to live with it

keep in mind, its a THUMBNAIL, as in its meant to give a basic idea of what the full size image looks like, you dont have to be able to make out every little detail because you want them to use the link on the image to view the actual image file, or at least a page with whatever layout you have dedicated to just the image...

if you absolutely have to have that clarity, you'll probably have to resize the image and shop it up to get the text or whatever back in at an acceptable size and clarity, etc

[djr33]

hmm..... what about exporting as a gif? that can look blocky...

[Twey]

The official GIMP site, with links to all versions and builds, is here.
Interesting link there, sleipner: I hadn't heard of GIMPShop before. Although I think I prefer the native GIMP interface. Photoshop looks like you'd need those eight legs just to keep control of everything (suffers from "too-many-buttons" syndrome)

[sleipner]

I first heard of it in a slashdot comment and checked it out, I think it makes it just a little bit more like photoshop, all the better for me. I can see that GIMP is a useful tool, but since I learned on photoshop, its kinda hard to know where all my tools went to in GIMP, or if it even has them at all. one of the big points of the class I took for photoshop was making images seem like they belonged in another and removing things from pictures by rubber stamping and whatnot - so when I tried GIMP, even with GIMPShop, thats the sort of thing I kinda wanted to toy with, but the UI is so different...

[djr33]

I just decided to test my theory out. Here's an example:

auto.gif was just resizing to 25%. manual.gif was zooming out to 25% then doing a new screencap and saving that part of the image.

The difference is slightly noticable.

In the end, it's not gonna matter... it's just a preview... won't ever be too clear.

Don't think it's worth messing with at this point.