Hi, I'm getting back into art and I remember having issues with quality and sizing the last time that I worked on horse art. I was wondering if you guys resize the background and horse and then work on it, work on it then resize it, or some other combo.

This is my question because I started to use better quality stock when I was really into doing my manips and noticed that the stock I was using wasn't great, so I made the adjustment. So I'm thinking that the resizing thing is what's messing with the quality and when I've tried messing around with different methods (it has been awhile though), I noticed different qualities in art, but couldn't figure out which method was best when resizing.

I hope this wasn't confusing! Any help is appreciated :)

Something you should notice is that some programs are worse at resizing than others. For example, Gimp is terrible while Photoshop is pretty good at it.

Always always work without resizing. You need your canvas to be big so you can work on details better.

When everything is completed, what I do is I export the whole thing (horse + background) to PNG. PNG doesn't lose quality compared to JPG.

Then, I make a new file with the size required for HEE (300x300, 500x500 and so on) and I open the PNG image on that new file to then resize it. That's what has worked so far for me.

Ohh ok thank you so much, that is very helpful, I shall try that!

Also, going along with Shivering Sea, if you have Photoshop you can make the image you are fitting in your new file a smart object and it will keep a lot of detail. You can also flatten an image and resize it using your first file if you are using photoshop and then use that as your PNG if you do not want to save it as one first.

i don't know if this will help, but with the app i used, i worked in 1000x1000 first then save it(after finishing it) as png then resize it to 500x500. but i'm not an expert so maybe someone has a better advice!