Any good tools for downsampling?

[J. A. Vogt]

When I create my comics, I use a 2100x3150 image file. Naturally, this is far too large to upload to my site, so I shrink my comics down to 650x975. The problem is that diagonal and curved lines often come out very jagged-looking, and I'm always disappointed by the final (shrunken) result. What tools would be best to shrink my comics to the proper size while still preserving the crispness of the line work?

[Mastermind]

I also have this problem but the only "solution" I could come up with is drawing thicker lines :/

[McDuffies]

Which file types do you use? And which program?

[J. A. Vogt]

Which file types do you use? And which program?

I have used Paint Shop Pro 8 ever since I first started making comics using the computer back in 2003. I do most of the work in the program's native .pspimage format, then use the program's Resize tool using the "Smart Size" algorithm to shrink the image to 650x975. From then on, it looks pretty much the same as the finished JPEG version.

I actually got Photoshop recently, as I was starting to think that PSP8 was getting a bit old, but the learning curve was steeper than I expected. I spent about an hour trying to make a hollow rectangle with a black border before I gave up in frustration. That's another thing - I'd appreciate a good Photoshop tutorial; the built-in help feature was not very helpful.

[McDuffies]

Ugh, it's been ages since I used any webcomic photoshop tutorial... I remember Makeshift Miracle tutorial being very useful, but that is gone now.

Anyways, I don't know if your problems are due to program... never used PSP but I never had problems with resizing when I was using photoshop in it's native file format. But it's possible that your lines are just too delicate for screen resolution.

[Mastermind]

I agree, photoshop help is useless. You should play around, try to do something and just google what you don't know. It's pretty stupid that there's no simple way to do basic shapes. You have to use rectangular selection then Edit>Stroke. Who would figure that out on their own?

[McDuffies]

I used selection, filled it up, then select->contract and emptied it. It was rather quick but also from an online tutorial.
I guess they wanna make a clear divide between what Photoshop can do and what Illustrator can do. I know I get really annoyed that some things that are simple in Photoshop can't be done directly in Illustrator (and it's also not explained well). Illustrator's help is also not of much help, but you got internet and whatever you wanna do, there'll be some forum post out there explaining it.