Digital photo resizing method (1 Viewer)

The same version of a picture often needs presenting in a number of different sizes. My software (Paint Shop Pro 5) offers four methods of resizing and my question is which is best for certain subjects?

They are described as "Smart size", "Bilinear resample", "Bicubic resample" and "Pixel resize". Trial and error reveals distinct differences when sizing down (the usual requirement), with some methods resulting in a blending and softening and others a blockier and hence sharper-looking result.

Any comments or advice welcome. Thanks.

For the task of producing scaled down pictures suitably sized for showing on monitors, and optionally compressed sufficiently to be internet friendly, it might be worth using something like Easy Thumbnails:
http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/?Easy Thumbnails=2600
This freeware program offers a selection of algorithms, as well as sharpening, brightness, contrast and jpeg quality settings in a straightforward interface.
As you say options without antialiasing give results which look sharp from a distance but look blocky close up (and the lack of smoothness may make them difficult to jpeg compress). Other options might give results that look too soft. Some of the best algorithms manage to avoid the blockiness while remaining reasonably sharp; the price here might be artifacts introduced by the algorithm and longer processing time. The qualities of the nine resampling filters available in Easy Thumbnails are briefly described in the manual available for download as a pdf file.

Thanks. I'll give it a go.

Norm,
I followed the link and D/L Easy Thumbs just to give it a try.
Excellent! Thanks very much for the info, it will save me a lot of time using PSP and a lot of trial-and-error. Hopefully Brian will find it equally useful.
Happy Christmas.
Mike

Mike D,
Glad you made out OK with this, but I just thought I'd mention that if you always use Paint Shop Pro's "Smart Size" method, you pretty much can't go wrong.