Scaling down images smoothly for decals

Try changing the original image to 600 dpi (or more if your system can handle it).  Hopefully there is an option to retain the original dimensions at the same time.

regards,

Jack

That's odd. Making ir smaller should not hurt resolution. In what form do the ragged edges appear? In photoshop on the screen? In a pdf or jpeg on the screen? Or when printed as a decal?

If it's the latter, the problem might be the printer software.

Is your art a vector image or is it rasterized? A vector art image will reduce or enlarge nicely. No problems. If the image is rasterized, like a .jpg, you will have issues with a ragged image, even if your are reducing the image. jgeratic is correct in suggesting that you increase your printer output resolution. That should help some. Since you are using Photoshop, are you using the latest version? If so, you should be able to convert a raster art image to vector art. That may help too.

Here are some general tips for scaling, both down and up.  The resolution of both the original image, and your printing resolution are important.

If scaling up, for a larger decal, the image resolution is most important, though. If it lacks resolution, this can be a hard problem- more on that later.

Scaling down is usually not an image resolution problem.  However, printer resolution can be a problem.  Use some simple math, though.  Take the image resolution in pixels per inch, and divide by the scaling ratio.  You must print at at least that much resolution.  Small decals require high printing resolution.

The hardest problem is printing larger.  There the original image must be hi res.  Now some graphics programs can do a fair job of increasing resolution when you resize.  You can set the pixels per inch to a higher value than a regular resize.  If your software allows you to set options on the algorithm used in a resize, play with that.

Otherwise you have to become an artist to improve the image.  First try using the resize function to just increase pixels per inch.  Then try the programs sharpening function and any resize options.  Finally, take the resized and higher pixel image, set your paint brush size to one pixel, and go at at by hand in bad areas.

When I want to enlarge one of my digital photographs I use the "10% rule." I read about this technique some years ago. When scaling up, enlarge the image 10% at a time. This allows Photoshop to extrapolate and fill in the gaps of the jpg image and pretty much maintain clarity of the image. This takes a while but the results are generally OK.