7MP photos resized to 640x480 or less

[HiDefNZ]

Hello all
I have just purchased a 7MP Sony DSC-P150 digital camera and would like to know how to resize 7MP photos to a very small size (such as 640x480 or less), without getting jagged lines on straight edges. I don't know much about resizing, and am new to digital photography. The example below was resized using IrfanView. How do you resize high resolution images without getting this problem? I would appreciate any help.

 

[walter23]

You might try a different program like photoshop (if you can download it somewhere, or already have it) or The Gimp (which is free - www.gimp.org ). The problem is that the line has to be "antialiased" - slightly brighter grey pixels have to be put in the 'crooks' of the jagged line to make it look less jagged. If you zoom in really close (on the above, smaller sized image) near one of the lines you'll see what I mean by this. IrfanView probably does a very simple interpolation which doesn't attempt to fix this problem.

 

[Rogue Monk]

Photoshop might help. It does offer a few more controls while resizing.

Sometimes, you won't be able to fix this. The clouds and the greens look fine. You only see a problem in the power lines. Because they're fine to begin with this will only be ampliphied as you get smaller.

Unless you are shooting the power lines on purpose, most people would recommend that you clone them out. The other thing is that if you don't point it out, people probably won't notice.

 

[HiDefNZ]

Thanks for the info! After looking up interpolation, I found a program called "MagicViewer". I tried resizing the photo using "Bilinear" under the Interpolation options, and got the following result:

The grey square is in the middle because of it being a demo version. What do you guys think of this program? Is it worth buying for US$30?

 

[Digital Matt]

Put that $30 towards Photoshop Elements, which is $92.25 at Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=32-105-124&depa=0

However, since you bought a digital camera, you might already have it. Did the Sony come with software?

 

[HiDefNZ]

The camera came with some basic software - I couldn't find any tools to resize photos (the camera was a direct import from Japan). I will look into Photoshop Elements, I am downloading the trial version now.

 

[Unimaxium]

Someone also mentioned the GIMP. That might be a good program, as it's very full-featured yet it's free. I've used it a couple times just to try it out, and it is pretty nice for a free program. It doesn't have any fancy interface or anything like Photoshop or others do, but it can still do some good stuff. But if you've got the $90 to spare, you might as well gor for Elements since it might be easier to figure out and use.