How can I get better results when shrinking an image

Question

I\'m scaling images down in c#, and I\'ve compared my methods with the best method in Photoshop cs5 and cannot replicate it.

In PS i\'m using bicubic sharper, which

Answer 1

Looking at the amount of JPEG artifacts, especially at the top of the image, I think you set the jpg compression to high. That results in a smaller (filesize) file, but reduces image quality and seems to add more blur.

Can you try saving it in a higher quality? I assume the line containing CompositingQuality.HighQuality does this already, but maybe you can find an even higher quality mode. What are the differences in file size between Photoshop and C#? And how does the Photoshop image look after you saved it and reopened it? Just resizing in Photoshop doesn't introduce any jpg data loss. You will only notice that after you've saved the image as jpg and then closed and reopened it.