"JP White" wrote in message
SNIP
All programs will affect the picture quality to some degree, however.. Photoshop ‘save for web’ feature is pretty good for this purpose and has a minimal effect on picture quality and you can preview the effect before saving the file.
Indeed, all resizing to smaller dimensions creates losses. We simply cannot maintain detail smaller than one pixel. However the visual quality of the image doesn’t have to suffer (besides the loss of sub-pixel detail) if the right procedure is used. A small amount of blur applied to the image before downsizing will help to avoid potential artifacts (see this group’s thread called: "Downsizing methods" from May 3rd).
Another method that gives reasonable results, Stairstep resizing, can be automated and perfected with an action. If you’re working on a Windows platform,
http://www.imphotography.com/downloads/ssimagesize.htm will provide you with a tool that takes a lot of hassle out of your hands.
Bart
