What's your trick to quickly resize for different platforms?

[adequateannie]

I use Clip Studio Paint Pro, and I've been having troubles with the process of changing the resolution for different social media platforms.

I use vectors for most of my layers, but when changing resolutions, they become...offset. This leads to a lot of time spent fixing up each panel in the new dimensions. Sometimes I simply have to move them back into place, but other times I need to fill in gaps that appeared out of nowhere.

For example, I start with this in 1080x1080 px at 600 dpi

and when I change the resolution to a smaller size, it becomes like this (sorry for the super zoomed in quality)

I'd like to know what your methods are for quickly changing the dimensions of your comics without having to spend a whole lot of time fixing them up! I would really appreciate it!

[ninjashira]

A lot of times for things like that, if you Flatten your image into a single layer (in Clip Studio, Layer > Flatten Image) before resizing, it'll avoid those particular problems. Just make sure you don't overwrite your original multiple-layer file in case you ever need to go back and make changes.

[adequateannie]

Thank you for the answer!

Would that not cause it to lose quality while changing resolution, as flattening the image ends up rasterizing it?

[migxmeg]

When I go to post to social media, I do File > Export (Single Layer) > .png. Then you get an option to resize the exported image. I don't mess with my working copy. Haven't had any issues with it yet!

[ninjashira]

Any way you display an image online it's going to be rasterized, unless you're saving the image as an SVG (which Tapas and Webtoons can't do anyway). The big point of having vector images is so you can size UP without losing quality. You can pretty much always size anything DOWN and it'll still look good, whether it's a vector or a raster.

[adequateannie]

I actually always clicked past that page so quickly I didn't see that option. I even made auto actions for changing resolutions, silly me... Thank you!

[adequateannie]

Thank you so much for your help! This will save me a lot of time, especially for when I resize panels to move them around into other panels!

[rajillustration]

Luckily there's a webtoon slice tool you can use now, which will automatically let you choose if it's 800 or 940 px wide. But, like was mentioned before, when I'm not using that tool, I always, always, always flatten the image because with resizing, stuff will sometimes move a pixel left or right or won't reach the edge--it's a weird thing with digital art. I just save my flattened file as a different file, so that way I always have the original.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I actually use Croppy most of the time. Sometimes I use CSP's various export options, though I've never noticed the pixel displacement issue and I've never flattened my images first. Maybe because I always work in raster?

https://knicknic.github.io/croppy/