Hi Tanchelyn As Gog says, its the complexity of the resampling algorithm. Though the algorithms vary widely from program to program (even when they use the same name, 'Bicubic'!) some of them use more than 1024 adjacent pixels for sampling. So if you've taken away some of the original data with an intermediate resize and then gone and altered it further with some sharpening etc. You're actually reducing the efficiency of the algorithm. (I just noticed, sharpening before reduction!!! :scared::scared::scared: The accepted wisdom is to do a slight blur before reduction to avoid moire.)

regards
prixat