Let’s say you have a picture like this,
And you wish to resize it, I am using GIMP program here, it’s an image manipulation freeware (yup, like Adobe Photoshop, only it’s free). You can download it here: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ I use the resize tool from the tool box at the right side:
As you can see, the resized image becomes blur, if you still don’t get it, here’s another example,
‘Bitmap’ is our regular picture format, the picture from your camera, from Adobe photoshop…etc. , from afar, they look nice, when you zoom in, you realize something, All your images are actually made up of small dots, being so close to each other that they look like one line. This is what cause the blurring whenever you resize your image. There are 2 ways to repair this, 1st, you use a freeware called ‘Inkscape’, here’s the download link, http://inkscape.en.softonic.com/ So, how do you use this program?
First, when you run Inkscape, you will see something like this,
Go to File > Open > ‘ your image file name’ Your image should appear like this,
Go to Edit > Select All Then, go to: Path > Trace Bitmap A box like this should appear,
Check the ‘Colors’ box, uncheck ‘Smooth’ , click ‘OK’.
Then, close this ‘Trace Bitmap’ box, just click the ‘X’. After that, go to Object > Lower to Bottom Then, click on your image, press ‘Delete’ button on your keyboard to delete the image. The image you see now is the vector image, all your dots are connected into a straight line. You can now safely resize this image without making it blur.
Warning: You can only do this to images without too much details, you can’t do it to pictures such as human faces, why? 2 reasons,
• You will lost certain details/quality if you do that • The image file will become too large, it can go from a few kilobytes to several megabytes. So, if you happen to resize images with too much details, use the 2nd option, Open your image at GiMP. Go to Filters > Enhance > Sharpen Image Do this each time you resize your image. Adjust the degree of sharpness at the bar until you see what you like. Have fun ☺