Photoshop Top 40, Feature #3: Image Size

When I first pitched my Photoshop Top 40 podcast idea inside lynda.com, my producer gave me a wry grin and asked me what my Number 1 feature would be. Without hesitation, I announced “Image Size, of course!”

I later decided a couple of features earned higher honors. But I still consider Image > Image Size to be indispensible. It’s the determinant of image detail, the seat of resolution, the place where your megapixels live and die. If Photoshop eats and breathes pixels, then Image Size is the program’s stomach and lungs. Whether you’re sizing an image for output or downsampling it for the Web, Image Size is where the action is.

This week’s glorious panorama of the Moab skyline is file #17559470 from Miroslav of the Fotolia image library. For an exclusive dekeOnline deal, click this link.

This Week’s Winner, Next Week’s Hint

We had a record number of correct answers for Feature #3. Chosen at random, this week’s Photoshop Top 40: The Final 10 Contest winner is ozmopolitan of Chattanooga, TN, who exactly nailed “Image Size.” Congratulations, ozmo! Now it’s time to guess Feature #2. Hint: This feature is Command Central for just about everything you do inside Photoshop. And I’ll throw in one more: If Image Size is Photoshop’s stomach and lungs, Feature #2 is its brain. Keep an eye out for my newsletter in your email inbox (or spam folder ;-).

More than $3600 in Prizes

When I started this thing, I told you the prizes would get better and better as we worked our way to Feature #1. And now you know it’s true. This week’s prize package is valued at more than $3,600, nearly twice the value of last week and four times the week before! Your prizes include the amazing Magic Bullet PhotoLooks from Red Giant Software, a Wacom Intuos4 Medium pen tablet, a pass to the How Design Conference in Denver, Colorado, a year’s membership to the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, and your very own copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4. You’ll also get $1 in Fotolia credits, two of my One-on-One books, a month subscription to lynda.com, annual subscriptions to How and Print magazines, and the grand-slam Plug-In Suite 5 from onOne Software. Photoshop Top 4 is available as a downloadable podcast from iTunes. Click here to subscribe.

Best of luck on Feature #2!

Next entry:Martini Hour 059, In Which We Attempt 20 Photoshop Tips in One Martini Hour

Previous entry:Photoshop Top 40: Three Features Left and a Huge Cache of Prizes

  • Feature #2

    Preferences!

  • Good call drukepple

    but it’s much faster to just open a photo, make the changes on your own system, and see the diff… just say’in.

  • Sex on the Beach

    .... with my wife of course!  Thanks for asking!

  • Changing Image Size Default Settings

    Image Size is the one feature I use the most. But I almost always use Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction). Is there a way to make this the default reduction? The default method should be user selectable. I even have circumstances when I’d like to set the default to be Next Neighbor for a while (yes I do lots of work with resampling screen shots for printed documentation). How can I change this default?

  • Best intro to a comment ever, Flimsy

    I’ll let Deke defend himself while I sit back and enjoy “throne of lies.”

  • Try this

    Hey Chas,

    Navigate into Preferences, General, and look for Image Interpolation (should be near the top). Make your selection, choose OK, and that should get you going!

  • Thanks

    Oh geez, there it is staring me in the face every time I open Prefs>General. I’ve gone past that setting so many times and ignored it while on a search for other settings, that it became background noise. That’s the problem with a complex GUI like this, we become habituated to seeing only the features we use, and the ones we don’t use become invisible.

  • I don’t sit on a throne of lies

    I lie on a bed of lies.

    But you’re right that I failed to show the images at 200%. I suck!

    Even so, I’m so damn responsible. So here’s a demonstrative PSD file. Turn the layers on and off and view ‘em at any dag-gum size you wanna.

    Here’s the file. Right-click the link and choose Download or Save.

    Warning: It’s a big file (> 5MB). And it’s based on an original from Miroslav of the Fotolia image library.

  • This is my sad face (*_*)

    Just realized my guess for Feature #2 was already done. Is there any chance I can revise my official guess?

    Pretty please? (My sig is so very appropriate right about now, too.)

    ———————————-


    “If morons could fly it’d be pitch black.” - Anonymous.

  • Feature #2 new

    Layers >< !

  • Feature 3 Image size

    Very good and thorough explanation!
    But I regret that the pixeldimensions size ( in top of the dialog box) isn’t explained.

    Why does the value that is mentioned here differ from the actual imagesize on disk?

  • Feature 3 image size (reply)

    Are you referring to the “dimension” (ie: width x height) or to the “theoretical and somewhat arbitrary” amount of bytes it occupies on your hard drive ?

    My guess is that you, like millions of others (including myself)


    are getting confused over the old question about:

    Image Size vs File Size vs Pixel Dimensions vs Saved Size


    ...or, When is File Size not File Size?

    Deke does a great job on most of the #3 lesson but he did skim over this


    point rather lightly… the URL (below) might help to clear things up for you.

    http://www.johncornicello.com/articles/filesize.html

    Hope this clears things up.


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