reduce image size without pixelation

A place to talk about anything else with other Pixelmator users.
User avatar

2021-04-19 16:10:39

Hello!
Am sorry to ask as am sure this question has been asked like a million times, but I just can't seem to find the answer specific to me...!
I am relatively new to Pixelmator pro and have had a request to reduce the size of one of our images from a local publisher. Whenever I go to Image>image size and click on the new size it becomes really pixelated when I zoom in on it...
Does this make sense!
The image I have at the moment is 4488 x3484 500dpi I need to get down to 228 x177... but can't seem to do it without it being unreadable and really pixelated... please help!

Many thanks

dan
User avatar

2021-04-20 14:50:12

Hey there Dan. I understand what you're getting at but I'm afraid it's not how digital graphics work at the moment. There are quite a few nuances to this but probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that images are made up of a fixed amount of pixels. Taking away or adding more pixels will always affect the original image in one way or another.

You can imagine your image as a set of colored blocks. Each individual block — one solid color but all of them combined, make up a meaningful image. Pixels themselves don't really have a size as they aren't physical units, but just for the sake of argument, let's say that each of these blocks represents one pixel. This would mean your original image consists of 15,6 million of these colored blocks (4488 multiplied by 3484). When downscaling to 228 x 177 pixels (which is 40,356 pixels in total), you're essentially telling Pixelmator to throw away the large majority of the blocks the image originally consisted of and rearrange those remaining 40 thousand into the same image. I hope you can see where I'm going with this. There are simply not enough building blocks left to achieve the same level of detail. This becomes especially apparent when zoomed in, but the image should look OK if displayed or printed at the original size (228 x 177 pixels).
User avatar

2021-04-22 13:15:58

Hi there, thanks so much for getting back to me yes this really helps. So what you're saying is that even though the finish product looks pixelated when it actually gets used it should look okay?
User avatar

2021-04-26 11:47:04

If viewed or printed at 100% then yes, it should look OK. The image will be small enough for the eyes to blend the individual pixels together and see a meaningful picture instead.