Hi, welcome back to the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you two examples of how to use interpolation methods to get
better results when you're decreasing or increasing the size of your image.
In the first example, I'll show you how to properly scale pixel art illustrations to
avoid blurry edges and always get sharp lines.
Then I'll show you how to use Photoshop's newest interpolation method, which features
artificial intelligence assisted upscaling to preserve important details,
so stick around until the end of the tutorial because there's a lot of valuable information that you don't want to miss.
Also, if this is your first time at the Photoshop training channel then don't forget to click
on that subscribe and notification buttons.
Okay, let's get started.
Before I show you anything, I first want to make sure that you understand what the problem
is, so I'm going to go through a couple of steps.
You'll see the issue and then I'll show you how to solve it.
So we're working with two layers.
We have this simple background and this illustration, which has very straight edges.
If I select the zoom tool and zoom in you can see the straight edges.
So if I wanted to resize this pixel art illustration to put it on my website or do something else
with it, then I would of course go into image, image size, and then resize the image.
So if I'm going to put it on my website, maybe I want it to be a resolution of 72,
a width of 350 pixels.
Then I can press OK.
Photoshop all of course resize the image.
If I go into 100%, the image looks pretty good, but if I start zooming in you'll right
away notice that the image now it's actually kind of blurry.
You can see the blur on the edges of the dinosaur, so that's the issue.
When I resize the image, I lost all the sharp edges.
So, how can I retain those sharp edges when I resize something?
Well first I'm going to undo that adjustment.
I want to fit the image to screen.
Then I'm going to go into image, image size once again.
And this time we're going to discuss the resample menu.
So what is resampling?
Resampling is changing the amount of image data as you change either the pixel dimension
or the resolution of the image.
When you decrease the number of pixels you downsample, in other words, information is
deleted from the image.
When you increase the number of pixels or upsample, new pixels are added and Photoshop
determines how to subtract or add those pixels based on the interpolation method, and this
is what this option is.
So when Photoshop decreased the size of that dinosaur in the previous step it automatically
chose one of these interpolation methods.
Notice the dividers in the dropdown which categorize the interpolation methods.
On top, we have the enlargement interpolation methods, then we have the reduction, and that
the bottom we have interpolation methods that help you both enlarge and reduce the size
of an image.
What we're going to do now is select the different method is going to give us better results.
So I'm going to select this interpolation method here called nearest neighbor hard edges.
This interpolation method will help us both enlarge and reduce the size of an image.
In this case, we'll use it to reduce the size of our pixel art illustration.
When I select it I can make the same adjustments I did in the previous example.
I'll type in 72 and for width we'll go to 350 and press OK.
Notice what happens now when I zoom into the image, notice that I still have those straight
edges, and I don't have that ghosting effect I had in the previous example.
So it's very important for you to get the right interpolation method when you're downscaling
or upscaling an image, and the best thing about this interpolation method is that you
could use it to increase the size of a pixel art illustration.
So remember, we're working with a small image.
I'm going to press M to select the marquee tool, make a selection around it, and you
can see that it's now 350 pixels wide by 294 tall.
So if I go into image, image size, and select that same nearest neighbor interpolation method
and just change the size to 3000 pixels wide, you will see that I still have straight edges,
and I don't get blurry edges.
If I undo that and going into image, image size, and just change it to automatic and
make that same exact image increase but using automatic, you can already see in the preview
that we're not going to get good results.
So it's very important that you always select the right interpolation method.
I'm going to go ahead and undo these adjustments, and I'm going to fit the image to screen,
and I also want to point out that if you select the move tool and you press Ctrl T, Command
T on the Mac, to transform, you have the interpolation method here.
Notice that by default Bicubic Automatic is selected, so I can hold shift, click-and-drag
on the corner handle and scale it way down.
Then I'll zoom in and you'll see those blurry edges.
So I'm going to fit the image to screen.
I'm going to undo that.
Then I'm going to press Ctrl T, Command T on the Mac,and this time I'll select nearest
neighbor, which is the same interpolation method that we used in the image size window
so I can then hold Shift, click-and-drag on the corner handles to scale that down, then
I'll press Enter, that's Return on the Mac, and I'll zoom in and you don't get the blurriness
that we had with the different interpolation method.
By the way, let me know in the comments below if this technique is new to you and hit that
like button if you enjoy it.
Now I know what some of you may be thinking: can you do this with an actual photo, not
an illustration?
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is, you can, but there are limitations, especially when you're enlarging
an image because you're generating new pixels and that may introduce problems such as adding
digital noise or blurring detail in an image.
However, if you select the proper interpolation method, you can reduce those issues, and that's
what we will discuss in the next example.
Okay.
Now let's talk about the different interpolation methods that we can use with actual images.
Now, before we get started, press Ctrl K, Command K on the Mac,
to bring up the Preferences panel.
Then under technology previews make sure that enable preserve details 2.0 upscale is checked.
By the way, this will only work in Photoshop cc, so if you have an older version of Photoshop
unfortunately this feature is not available, so this is for cc only.
Then press OK, so we're gonna work with this photo that is 500 pixels wide by 333 pixels tall.
And if we wanted to enlarge this image, we would of course go into image, image size,
and we can work with their resample options.
Something I didn't mention in the previous example is that you have to make sure that
resample is check.
Once again, when you change the size of something, you're either adding or deleting pixels and
the resample option gives you the interpolation method.
In other words, what algorithm we're going to use to either delete or add pixels.
If you uncheck this box, you will not be able to add any more pixels.
In other words, you will not be able to change the dimensions.
So if I come in here and select inches, for example, and I type in 500, as in 500 inches,
notice that the dimensions do not change, only the resolution.
So, in this case, one pixel per inch.
Put simply, when you have resample uncheck, you can only change the print size.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, the cancel button changes to a reset button.
If I reset this box, you'll notice that resample is check, and if I change the inches to 500
again you'll notice that the dimensions change, so make sure that every sample is checked.
And I'm going to reset that one more time by holding Alt and clicking on reset.
Anyway, so if we wanted to change the size of this image we would come into the image
size dialogue box and change it to whatever size we wanted.
If we change it to 400%, which would be 2000 pixels in this case, then we would get a result here.
Make sure that you zoom in to 100.
That will give you the best representation of what is going on.
And this is the preview of the image size using the automatic option.
Automatic simply means that Photoshop chooses the resampling method based on the document
type and whether the document is scaling up or down.
So we can change that.
We can actually tell Photoshop to use a specific interpolation method.
You can see that the list of interpolation methods have dividers.
The ones in this group are for enlargement.
This one is for reduction, and, as you saw in the previous example, these can be used
for both.
The one that we're going to look at for this example is Preserve Details 2.0.
Notice that when I select it the image changes, and you can actually select different ones
and see how the image changes, so you can actually select them all if you want and see
which one gives you the best result.
The one that I recommend using for making things larger is preserve details 2.0.
And remember, you have to enable it from the preferences panel.
This is the newest interpolation method.
It uses artificial intelligence to assist with the upscaling to preserve important details
and textures while resizing images without introducing distortions.
So Adobe's artificial intelligence is called Adobe Sensei and it helps you get better results.
Another advantage of using this interpolation method is that you have a reduction noise slider.
Right now set to 100%.
The default is actually zero.
So when you're scaling an image, you may introduce noise and artifacts into the image that you
may not want.
So what I'll do is I'll just press OK, just so you can see the difference.
So I'll press OK, and this of course scales the image.
If I double click on the zoom tool you will see the image at 100%, which is what we're
looking at now.
And if I go into window in history that brings up the history panel.
This is my history.
All the steps that I've done so far.
And right here I have a little camera.
If I click on that little camera I create a snapshot, so I'm taking a picture of this
history state so that I can always come back to it so I can go back to the original or
I can come back into that snapshot.
I'll just call it noise at 0% so that we can remember what that is, and I'm going to click
on the car resize to go back to the original and I'm going to collapse it.
Then I'm going to go into image, image size.
I have preserve details 2.0 selected, and I'm also going to now use the, the reduced
noise slighter.
Before I do so I got to make sure that I have the same percentage size increase, so I'll
type in 400% and I can click and drag to position my image.
And you can use the noise lighter to remove some of the noise.
What I'll do in this case, I'll just bump it up all the way to the end so you can see
an extreme version of it and then press OK.
Then I'll go into my history panel and I'll create another snapshot.
I'll just rename it to be consistent and I'll just call it noise at 100% and you can see
the difference.
This is without the noise lighter.
You can see all the noise that was introduced when we scaled up the image.
This is using the noise slider.
Obviously the noise at 100% gives us a very, very smooth results which may not look realistic
and it may make the image look like a painting.
Obviously, when working in a real project you do have to fine tune the slider to get
results that look good for your image.
I just wanted to show you both extremes in this example.
And I also want to point out that you can apply the interpolation methods when you resize
an image on export.
So if you go into file, export, export as, you'll see the interpolation methods here
under the image size section.
Where it says resample I can click and select a different interpolation method.
So, remember to set the view to 100 to get an accurate representation, then select your
image size, whatever that may be, and then you can select whatever interpolation method
that you like and you can also scroll through all of them to see which one gives you a better result.
Also, one thing to note is that in this dialog box you don't get the noise slider when you
select preserve details, so you don't have access to that in this window unfortunately.
So that is one downside.
Also, notice that we have seven different interpolation methods here.
If you are using the older save as for the web.
Let me bring that up so you can see what that looks like, save for the web legacy, you also
get the interpolation methods under quality, but notice that you only have five in this case.
So you do have more interpretation methods if you use export as instead of the old save
for the web, so I just wanted to point those out to you just in case you want to resize
the image on export and not on the working document.
Also, if you want to learn more about exporting layers and how the export as dialogue works
then check out my tutorial on exporting.
I'll place a link right below in the description.
Let me know in the comments below what you learned from this tutorial.
If this is your first time at the Photoshop training channel then don't forget to click
on that subscribe and notification buttons.
Thank you so much for watching and I will talk to you again in the next tutorial.