On Tue, Sep 20, 2005 at 09:53:44PM -0400, Helen wrote:

Photos from my camera are huge in Gimp, so I use Scale Image to get them small enough to fit into a photo frame. Am I losing picture quality when I Scale image to make it smaller? If so, is there a way to reduce an image without losing quality?
Helen, using jpeg image format on Gimp 2.2.4

In the lower portion of the image window, the second from the right radio menu there -- marked with a percentage. Change this from 100 percent to something smaller like 50% or even 25%. Fitting the image to the computer screen is different than scaling the image. Scaling the image is good for email or for web sites.

carol

ps, how did you avoid the user mail signature on the lower portion of this mail sent to the gimp-user mail list?

On 9/20/05, Helen wrote:

Photos from my camera are huge in Gimp, so

Yeah, I noticed that too. You'd think they're unnecessary (the millions of extra dots) - until you print. Funny thing this world is. Annoying how you can get away with 72 dpi on a monitor, yet for printing you need something like 4800x2400 dpi. Can't tell until you print... and if you don't ever print (you tell someone else to do so) then it's really annoying.

I use Scale Image to get them small enough to fit into a photo frame. Am I losing picture quality

Digital photo frame or physical (e.g. printing out)?

when I Scale image to make it smaller? If so, is

Yes, you are losing quality. You reduce the number of dots in the image, which reduces the number of dots per inch in the final printout. I'm assuming you're printing out, yes?

Of course, the type of scaling affects the accuracy of the loss... but it's still loss, yes.

there a way to reduce an image without losing quality?

Yes; change the DPI (dots per inch) in the Print Size dialog, instead of using Scale. It may help to uncheck "dot for dot" in the view/zoom menu whatsit, so that you get an approximation of what it should appear on paper size on the monitor (provided you gave it correct DPI values when you configured GIMP the first time). The values given in the dialogue for size are pretty accurate too, provided your printer supports them.

As a side note, IIRC Print in GIMP on Linux will adjust the size of the picture by scaling up or down to the whole page by default if you don't specify otherwise, and a print "size" can also be specified there, I believe. In Windows, because it uses the Windows print dialogue, this is only specified in the Print Size dialogue, I believe.

Helen, using jpeg image format on Gimp 2.2.4

OS? (Operating System?)

Hope I was helpful.

Carol Spears wrote:

ps, how did you avoid the user mail signature on the lower portion of this mail sent to the gimp-user mail list?

Probably by sending HTML mail...

Michael

On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 07:30:23PM +0200, Michael Schumacher wrote:

Carol Spears wrote:

ps, how did you avoid the user mail signature on the lower portion of this mail sent to the gimp-user mail list?

Probably by sending HTML mail...

google hack?

cute.

carol

When you resize the image gets fuzzy as GIMP tries to squeeze the image into a smaller space. Play with the "Unsharp Mask" tool to sharpen it again. It can be found at Filters->Enhance->Unsharp Mask. Settings to try: 0.1, 0.50, 4, but in general, if you really notice the sharpening then you've done too much!

Donncha.

Helen wrote:

Photos from my camera are huge in Gimp, so I use Scale Image to get them small enough to fit into a photo frame. Am I losing picture quality when I Scale image to make it smaller? If so, is there a way to reduce an image without losing quality?
Helen, using jpeg image format on Gimp 2.2.4