my avatar not sharp

[fullmonti]

I just picked image for my new avatar, but when I posted with it I noticed it's not sharp (the original image is very sharp).
I have posted other photos (photobucket) & they are good.
What is there different that must be done for avatars that I didn't do (just sized it to 150x150 as per instructions) is there some trick I don't know?

 

[Luiz Rocha]

It has to be 8kb max size, so I think the site is decreasing the quality to save space. Are you resizing it with photoshop?

 

[fullmonti]

Yes, save as jpeg 150x126 in FS

 

[Recty]

Can you upload the original? One of us can resize it and see if it looks better?

 

[wetWolger]

IME an unsharp mask filter after a resize will regain a lot of the sharpness....

 

[fullmonti]

OK new version up, did a high pass filter on tif file, reduced to 150x150, converted to jpeg,
then sharped, looked pretty good on monitor but still looks like it was shot through a mud
filter when imported to avatar.

This is photobucket version at 768x768 no extra sharpening. I think it looks pretty good till it's reduced & imported to avatar. Any ideas?

 

[Recty]

This is your current one...

I'm not sure if this is any better... I think it's a little better, I tried to bring out the lights.

I think a lot of what you are losing is the star pattern coming off of all the lights in the picture. When you resize down to 150 pixels, you're losing all that and the picture loses a lot of pop.

 

[fullmonti]

It is little better, what did you do?

I may just look for big simple image to use. I've never reduced an image this small before.
I'm a commercial photographer, usually clients want them big as they can getem. This hole
forum thing is new to me, never really surfed web much before I got into reef tank & started researching, great resource!

 

[wetWolger]

sharpen is not the same as an unsharp mask

 

[Recty]

It is little better, what did you do?

I just did an unsharp mask on it, basically.

 

[fullmonti]

The original cropped images was more than 11MB. I found out from a friend that when reducing an image this much it should be done in steps, not all at once. I reduced the new
version by 50% & sharped each time until it was the needed size 150x150. Think it looks
better, still had to bump the saturation a good bit.