ICONS . PHONE GRAPHICS . LOGOS
and other tiny images

FACES . EXPRESSIONS . SYMBOLS . ICON-SIZED GRAPHICS

DRAWING . New addition:- PAINTING on tablets and smartphones

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CAN YOU USE A PHOTO
to make a very small two-colour image?

Can you use a photo to create a seriously tiny black-and-white picture, maybe for a logo, phone graphic, thumbnail portrait or icon?

The short answer to that is not very easily

It's interesting to see what happens to a photo when reduced in Photoshop.

JPEG 72 x 28 pixels	greyscale GIF	2 colours no dither
2 colours 100% dither diffusion	2 colours 100% dither pattern	2 colours 100% dither noise

A photo with only two colours will often disintegrate at tiny size

You see what happens to a photo when reduced to an inch wide, and then on down to only two colours. There are not even any shades of grey. Dither (various patterns of dots) helps to model the main shapes. Photoshop offers three varieties of dither: Diffusion, Pattern and Noise.

However, most of the detail is gone.

If you really do need a very small two-colour picture,
draw-it-yourself could be the only answer.

If you don't feel you can tackle a design a whole inch wide - you can always stick to extra small drawings like the sunflower below.

You could clip a small area from a larger picture. Preferably your own artwork.

Be sure to observe copyright if you are chopping chunks off somebody else's work. Even more so than photos, drawings are very much the property of the person who created them.

CUT PIXELS, CUT EXPENSE Email big photos . Cut gallery costs

HANDLING ICON-SIZED IMAGES Sharper pictures . Nano images

Icons from photos . Photoshop icons . MS Paint . Graphic Converter

DOWNSIZE GIFs Photoshop GIF optimizer . Rainbow ride . GIF secret

SAVE SPACE Use a pun . Animate . Anagrams . Part for whole

AGENDA ICONS Beat information overload . Calendar icons

(c) Valerie Beeby 1998 - 2011

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