On Image Quality
Whether you are making small graphics such as icons, or big graphics like blends and website headers, using low quality images will ruin any graphic, no matter how awesome the idea behind it was. While it’s a slight bit easier with icons as they are small and resizing images to make them smaller makes the low quality less notice-able, using high quality images for any graphic you make, will really help improve the overall quality of your graphics. In this article, I will explain exactly what low quality and high quality means.
Low Quality Images
Low quality images are usually small, grainy, blurry or pixelated and have bad lighting (either low contrast, or too much contrast). They sometimes have a busy background, which makes them harder to use.
Other images might not necessarily be low quality images, but would just be hard to work with because of gradients and other effects that have already been added to an image that would be near impossible to take out thus making it very hard to work with. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll still call these kind of images low quality.
Some examples of low quality images:
Low Quality Image (Mischa Barton)
Low Quality Image (Jennifer Love-Hewitt)
Low Quality Image (Jennifer Love-Hewitt)
Medium Quality Images
There are some images that would neither classify as bad quality nor as high quality. They are neither small nor huge, but still are crisp and clear. You should still be able to make nice graphics with these kind of images, if you know what you’re doing.
Some examples of medium quality images:
Medium Quality Image (Amanda Seyfried)
Medium Quality Image (Rachel Bilson)
High Quality Images
These are the kind of images that are best to use in graphics. They usually are a huge size and are very crisp and clear. These kind of images tend to be from professional photoshoots and have usually have a clear, solid background, but at least a background that is easy to cut out and thus makes the image easy to blend.
Some examples of high quality images:
High Quality Image (Mischa Barton)
High Quality Image (Jennifer Love-Hewitt)
Depending on the characteristics of a low quality image, you can find the exact same image in a high quality or at least medium quality version if you search for it. Perhaps not when it’s the contrast that makes it a low quality image, but when it comes down to being a small, grainy, blurry or pixelated image, you usually can find a better quality version of it somewhere.
Conclusion
In this article, I’ve explained the difference between low, medium and high quality images and shown some examples of each type of image quality. As I’ve said before, using high quality images instead of low quality ones can really make a huge difference and improve the overall quality of your graphics.
I hope you’ve found this article useful. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to let me know!
Recent Comments