i was recently asked which is the best ai software for reducing the size of images as i never use
these packages to downsample my images i thought it was an interesting question in this video i'm
going to test several packages to find the best way to reduce image size without losing quality
the image i'll be testing is this landscape scene i recently shot it has plenty of fine detail that
i want to preserve and i'll be reducing its size down to 2000 pixels to start with i'm creating a
default image as a baseline to compare the results against to do this i'm using the photoshop image
size feature in the image menu i'll then set the size to 2000 pixels on the long edge
and the method to automatic which allows photoshop to pick the best resizing method from its options
i can then save the resized image using the jpeg format at a quality setting of 11. something to
remember when reducing the size of an image like this is that it can make it appear soft this
happens because the resizing reduces the contrast around objects and edges making them harder to see
it's this reduction in sharpness that makes the resized images appear to lose quality to
avoid the problem photoshop typically applies sharpening to an image when reducing its size
our resizing software will also need to deal with this softening effect to ensure details remain
sharp and clear now let's test the image using a couple of the ai enlargement applications the
first i want to test is topaz gigapixel version 6.2 which is the most recent release when i
recorded this video i've reviewed gigapixel in the past and it's extremely impressive when enlarging
images for this test i'm entering the width as 2000 pixels and setting the ai model to standard
the suppress noise and remove blur slider values are then automatically selected by the software
i'll then save the image in the jpeg format with the maximum quality settings this is one of the
slowest methods of reducing the size of an image in the test i didn't time it but it seemed to take
around a minute next up in the test is on one resize ai again this is the most recent release
of the software at the time of recording as before i'll set the required image size to be 2000 pixels
on the long edge then in the settings i'll use the resize ai 2022 standard method with the smoothness
at zero as i'm reducing the size of the image i'll also turn on the sharpening and choose
the mid tone sharpening options from the presets i've already been through the different sharpening
options and this one appeared to produce the best results i can then save the image as a jpeg with a
quality setting of a hundred percent unlike with topaz this completes almost instantly probably
because on1 is constantly processing the image in the background now although the original question
was which ai software is best for reducing image size i want to widen the testing to include non-ai
software the first of the additional methods i want to try is blow up 3 from exposure software
you can use this either as a standalone application or as a photoshop plugin which
is what i'm doing to speed things up i've already created and saved a preset to apply my settings
this reduces the image size to 2000 pixels on the longest edge and applies a low level
of screen sharpening and because i've already tested this i'm going to increase the sharpening
level to medium this time as low wasn't quite enough whilst blow up three has been around for
quite a few years it remains extremely effective for making image enlargements
it will be interesting to see how it performs when reducing the image size in this test
after running the plugin i'm back in photoshop with the image reduced in size i can then save
this as a jpeg next i'll use affinity photo to reduce the image size to see how it compares
with photoshop i can resize the image using the document menu and selecting the resize document
option then in the dialog i'll set the image size to 2000 pixels on the long edge change the
resampling method to use lans loss three separable apologies if i didn't say that quite right and
i'll check the resampling option is ticked now it's time to compare the results from the
various tests to do this i've put them all into the same photoshop document as separate layers
if you want to download this file i'll include a link to it in the youtube video information
that should help you to examine the differences much better than just looking at the video
what i'm looking for in the video is an image that appears to be crisp detailed and which
doesn't have obvious artifacts when viewed as a hundred percent i've already been through the
results before recording this video and i can tell you there are some real surprises in here
starting with the default photoshop image the results actually appear quite good
there's plenty of crisp detail in the foreground and the sky appears quite natural
now let's compare this with the affinity photo reduction whilst there is still plenty
of detail in the image it's not as obvious and it appears softer than the photoshop version
to be honest i expected this as i haven't applied any sharpening after reducing the image size next
up is topaz gigapixel ai which we know can produce stunning enlargements unfortunately in this test
where we're reducing the image size it hasn't performed well at all in fact i would put it on
a par with the results from affinity photo it certainly isn't as good as the photoshop image
and seems to lack the crispness that we need for web display next up is on one resize ai which has
fare better and it's the first to improve on the photoshop results this image seems to have
more depth and lots of fine detail it's certainly the better of the two ai packages we have on test
now for another surprise which is the blow up 3 software which seem to perform better than the ai
software it's managed to produce an excellent image reduction with no loss of quality this of
course was partly achieved by selecting the better sharpening method and that got me thinking because
when it comes to reducing image size to display on the internet i don't use any of the tools i've
tested instead i use a photoshop plugin from greg benz called web sharp pro i'll include a link to
greg's website in the youtube video information where you can find out more details so to test
webshop pro i set it to downsize the image to 2000 pixels whilst keeping the original image format
i usually have the software set up to add my watermark to images so i'll disable that then
in the general tab i can change the sharpening amount which for this image i'll set to about 108
i'll also use the option to protect the sky from being sharpened which is a great feature
there are of course lots of other things you can do with this software including batch processing
but we'll ignore that for this test comparing the results from webshot pro they look better
than the other methods i tested in this video based on this i think the best software to reduce
the size of an image without losing quality is web sharp pro i've also included these results
in a sample file you can download from my website despite these surprising results when it comes to
making enlargements the two ai packages are excellent in this video i compare them head
to head to decide which is best i hope you've enjoyed today's video and don't forget to
subscribe if you haven't already thanks for watching and i'll see you soon for another video