Making images smaller/keeping quality

[mattsiesco]

I know this has been asked, but I use Photoshop Elements and it lacks some of the features many people talk about on the forums that are on CS.

My question is: Is there any real way to resize smaller to about 800x600 while maintaining the quality of the image? Are there any programs dedicated to this? Its so frustrating having a great image and having it ruined when you resize it for online galleries.

Thanks alot.
matt

[BigRed450]

A simple re-size in Elements should work just fine Matt. After you resize you must sharpen try USM A- 500 R- 0.2 T-0.

[Poco]

What is ruined by your photo when you resize it other than the loss of pixels? Is there something else wrong with it? Are you getting artifacts in the photo or are you just complaining about the size itself?

800x600 is less than 0.5 Megapixels and no matter what you do after that, you can never get those pixels back. If you start with a 4 MP camera image and resize it you have just removed about 3.5 million pixels from the image. That is 7 out of every 8 pixels. The quality is bound to suffer.

[Briancd]

Always save your originals either to another folder or to CD and work with copies. That way you can always use the original later without loss of quality.

[PhotosGuy]

Its so frustrating having a great image and having it ruined when you resize it for online galleries. If you mean that it's low resolution, I look at that as a plus which makes it hard for people to steal a good print!
Otherwise, go with what's been said above.