Greetings to all,
Is Sketch app (by Bohemian) an appropriate tool for resizing and basic editing of stock images?
My initial objective for the tool is to modify image sizes, possibly crop them, without losing too much quality (preferably not at all), with the intent to place them into a self-hosted WordPress powered website. The theme I am using has certain guidance with respect to minimum image size requirements.
Thanks
Sketch isn’t really designed for image editing at all. For that sort of thing, there is Photoshop and a fair range of other similar apps (such as Affinity Photo etc.)
Thank you. Please forgive my ignorance, I am very new to the area of web development and image processing. Following up on your answer, is it correct to assume that Canva is not suitable as well?
If this the case, which type of Photoshop would you recommend? I see that there is Photoshop Elements, but not sure whether I should buy version 14, or what? There is also Premier, so it’s a bit confusing.
At this point, my basic use case iis to get a stock image, let’s say in PNG format, resize it, save it in the same PNG format, and upload it to a WordPress run website. Possibly, I would need to create several sizes, and possibly in a different format, such as JPG. I don’t know how it fits with the Photoshop’s PSD standard, given that it is a proprietary standard.
I am looking for a reliable and simple to use software. If it’s free, it would be great. But if Photoshop truly stands out in comparison with best free software tool, I don’t mind buying it. What is your advice?
Thanks again.
Hi rdn welcome to the forum
I have Windows,
Currently I use Paint for simple things. and IrfanView for more complex stuff.
If you’re just starting with graphics work and / or you think you will be doing only a limited amount of it, I suggest you try IrfanView.
I’ve tried a few different graphics apps, and though the interface and features varied somewhat they’ve all had the “basics” that I’ve ever needed for my limited amount of graphics work.
That hints that you may be resizing the images up, which is generally inadvisable. You won’t see any increase in image quality, it will likeley look worse blown up, but you may increase filesize (lose lose).
Image format is an important choice, you need to consider each image to pick the right format. Each format has its strengths and weaknesses and will handle certain types of image better than others. I see a lot of websites using png for photos creating a lot of bloat where jpeg would be far more efficient, not that png does not have its place on the web.
Gimp is an open source alternative to Photoshop, I’ve not used it, so can’t say what it’s like, it’s just one that I have heard about.
I would second that. I used IrfanView when I had a Windows PC and found it great - really easy to use. If all you need it for is resizing and optimising images, it should be fine. It also has a handy batch thumbnail creator, if you ever need such a thing.
[quote=“SamA74, post:5, topic:219979”]
Gimp is an open source alternative to Photoshop, I’ve not used it, so can’t say what it’s like
[/quote]I’ve used Gimp since moving to Linux. It’s not as simple and intuitive as IrfanView, but if you need more complex options, it’s a good free choice. (I can’t say how it compares to PhotoShop, as I’ve never used that.)
Thanks to everyone, appreciate the comments!
I have failed to state upfront that I am on Mac, although I do run Win7 on Fusion, mostly for financial and accounting software.
I do understand the loss of quality as a potential result of sizing up, thank you for the reminder anyway.
My use case could be as follows. I get 2765 Ă— 1843 RGB source image, which I would like to place into a web container, requiring at least 800px (height would be probably at 600px). My understanding is that if I upload the original image as is, WordPress would crop it into the container size of 800x600, which would lead to a loss of a part of the image, or at least to some unpredictable result. My understanding is that the best approach would be to pre-process the original image into the 800x600 size, save it in an optimal format, and then upload. Hence, my inquiry about an image processing software.
Is it correct reasoning, or is my understanding completely off the right track?
Yes, I would agree with that approach. It gives you control of exactly how the image is cropped, resized and compressed.
Something like Photoshop is probably overkill for just doing this.
I use imagemagick on windows and have a batch file with my command. I just drag and drop the image over the batch file icon and the image is resized, sharpened, a 1px black border and drop shadow added.
I used to pad the image out to a standard size with a transparent background.
Surely, it’s an overkill at this point. Hopefully, I am going to expand my objectives and activities as I get into more complex web development projects 
At this point, I have reviewed the Photoshop product line (already have a gigantic headache just from navigating the Adobe site). Also, as suggested by ralphm, I reviewed Affinity Photo, very impressed. What puzzles me that people reviewing it in the Apple AppStore constantly refer to AP’s price as a fraction of the cost, and complain about the subscription burden. AP cost $49.99, and PSE14 on Amazon is $69.99, not a big difference. Possibly, I am wrongly comparing AP vs. PSE, when it should be compared with full functionality of PS.
I am leaning towards trying and then buying AP. The downside is low, upgrades are free (so far), it’s open/edit/save is fully compatible with the PSD format, other formats are supported. I can always switch to PS for whatever reason in future. The only downside at this point, that AP does not have the Organizer feature offered by PS.
If possible, it would be helpful to clarify the point about Sketch. I understand that it is a design tool, but don’t designers need to manipulate and edit images they use for their sketch design projects? Does it mean that they first use an image editing tool like AP or PS, and then add a resulting image to a sketch project, or what?
Yes, designers have to use something else to edit the images first.
Buying Ps for something as simple as image resizing is indeed like buying a Boing 747 to do the local shopping. It’s also subscription-based, which is a real pain. Affinity Photo is a one-off cost—quite a small one—and yet does pretty much the same as Ps.
Another Mac option is Pixelmator, which is pretty good. But if you’re just resizing images, you can use the Preview app that comes with your Mac.
Good analogy, I agree with you of course. That’s why I never bought PS before, it looked too much.
At this time, my thinking was that as I was learning and getting into web development (working on our business site now) to find a tool or a set of tools which I could learn and use without the need to migrate and relearn if some additional functionality or format was needed.
Per your earlier recommendation, I reviewed AP and was very impressed, downloaded a trial version earlier this afternoon. Just watched a couple of video tutorials, looks very nice. In fact, now that I have seen the tutorials and some amazing features and effects, I am fairly certain that my usage would go beyond just image resizing. And as you pointed out, the one-off $49 is an acceptable cost for this kind of tool.
Thanks again.
By far, my most common image manipulating tasks are
resizing
cropping
optimizing for the web
At times I may adjust contrast / saturation
And “effects” such as posterize, watercolor, stained glass, etc are fun to play with but I’ve never used them for anything I’ve put on the web, Same for playing with “switching heads” and changing sections of color etc.
Even the avatar I’m using here now was a simple color adjustment and a “brush” added “blur”
Oh, and adding watermarks might be a use but I’ve never done that yet.
If it’s of any interest to you, Gimp is available for Mac, too.
Thank you for the recommendation, appreciate it!
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