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What's you're preferred method - Downsampling architectural images to avoid aliasing

danielmoore

New member
I have an acquaintance who's architectural images suffer badly from aliased diagonal lines on screen sized images. I am thinking about how to bring this up in a sensitive fashion with him since he's an older pro with decades more experience than I in that particular field. He has another person do the editing/PS work/prep for web. I'm not sure what method they are currently employing to downsample Canon 5Dsr files. If I had to guess, the fastest way possible, one shot in PS.

I'd like to hear from you on your ideas of best practice before I bring it up with him as I don't have issues or much experience with aliasing myself, not shooting much architecture. I'd prefer to have some advice on eliminating the problem prior to broaching the subject with him since he's extremely proud of his work and his website. I'd post a link but it's best that he never find out from here that I'm looking into help for his "problem".
 

pfigen

Member
The worst thing you can do is use Adobe's default setup for interpolation, which is Bicubic Automatic. That will automatically use Bicubic Sharper when downsizing, but use it on a sliding scale depending on how far you're going. That applies sharpening which also invariably shows stairstepping in diagonals. A better approach is to not sharpen the image at all, then downsample using Bicubic Smoother, then dupe the background layer and apply sharpening using your favorite tool (I mostly use Focus Magic), mask that layer and paint in the sharpening leaving the diagonals unsharpened.
 
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