Photoshop Tutorial On Optimizing Photos For Posting In The Photo Gallery

I have seen a lot of images posted recently in the Gallery section which I believe don’t look as good as they could because they have not been resized and sharpened correctly for the Forum.

A while ago I had posted something on the ideal image posting sizes for the Gallery section (http://www.photographythailand.com/Forum/index.php/topic,232.msg663.html#msg663), but that posting didn't offer a tutorial on how to resize and sharpen properly, so I am going to do that here.

Basically, all digital images shot with a digital camera will need to be downsized and then sharpened before posting them to the Forum to make them look their best. Personally I use Photoshop to do all my resizing and sharpening so this tutorial is based upon using the Photoshop program. I have also created Actions for Photoshop which you can download in the attached file at the end of this post so that you can resize and optimize your pictures using Photoshop on an automated basis. If you are wondering why you will need to sharpen your images, there is a simple explanation here: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?t=8579

In addition to the reasons explained on the above link, sharpening is also required because of a Low-Pass filter resident in most or all digital cameras which is used by the camera to reduce digital noise. You can read more about the effects of the Low-Pass filter here: http://www.microsoft.com/israel/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/sharpening.mspx

The attached Action file at the end of this post contains 4 Actions, 2 for Vertical (1 just resizes your photo and the other adds a small white border around the photo) and then 2 more for Horizontal pictures which do the same. You can make use of the Action by saving the file to the desktop of your computer. Then open up the Photoshop program. Make sure the Actions pallet is visible in Photoshop. If it isn't, then go to Window menu in Photoshop and select Actions. Once the Actions pallet is visible then drag and drop the Actions file I created from your computer desktop onto your Actions Pallet in Photshop and it will be ready to use in Photoshop.

TUTORIAL:

1 - Open your photo up in Photoshop

2 - Go to the Image menu and click on Image Size

3 - If you are going to be resizing a horizontal image set the Width to 800. If you are resizing a vertical image set the Height to 700. The Width and Height settings should be linked so you should only need to set one of them and the Photoshop should automatically set the other one for you. Then click OK.

4 - Go to the Filter menu. Then to Sharpen, Then select Unsharp Mask. Set the Amount to 60, the Radius to .6 and the Threshold to 0. If you want more sharpening then increase the Amount to a higher number, but up to a maximum of around 80. Then click OK.

5 - Then go to the File menu and select the Save For Web command. When the big dialogue box appears on your screen then set the file type to JPEG, the Quality to 70, and enable the Convert to sRGB box by clicking on it. Then click Save and save your file to your computer.

6 - You are now ready to post your saved photo to the Forum Gallery section.

Please note this tutorial was done using Photoshop CS4 on a PC, but the functions should be the same on older versions of Photoshop and I assume quite similar if working on an Apple computer.