About Irabl

Advanced scaling and format mastering. Irabl was founded by a Madrid retouching studio that carried a specific complaint into the conversion world: most online resizers treat downscaling as a maths problem when it is really a craft problem. The defaults you see on this site are the studio defaults we use on real client work.

Sharpening at the export size, not before

The resizer applies a single light unsharp mask only at the destination resolution, with parameters tuned for skin tones. A portrait downscaled from 4000 pixels to 1200 does not acquire the harsh digital edge that cheaper online tools leave on faces. The default scaling kernel is bicubic; Lanczos is in the advanced panel for product or architecture work where micro-detail matters more than skin smoothness.

Why the JPEG default is 90

Below quality 80, skin tones band on tight crops. Studio deliveries default to 90; hero spreads default to 95. The Irabl converter follows the studio playbook rather than the web-optimisation playbook, which is the opposite trade-off from Edvoa, our cousin tool tuned for publisher CI pipelines. Both are correct in their context; the defaults reflect the audience.

Grade once, resize once, encode once

Most studio softness on the web is not the resizer’s fault. It is the result of three accidental scalings stacked across Photoshop, the CMS upload step and the CDN derivative pipeline. Irabl resizes once, sharpens once and encodes once, and we tell users to do the same upstream. The blog has detailed playbooks for studio operators who want the full chain in production.

What stays a desktop job

Irabl is intentionally a finishing tool, not a retouching tool. There is no clarity slider, no AI-driven fill, no curves panel. Retouching belongs in Capture One, Photoshop or Affinity Photo; Irabl is where the final framing, scaling and encoding decisions get made. The hand-off boundary is deliberate.

Funding and editorial

The public tier is supported by display advertising clearly demarcated from the editorial blog. The studio licenses Irabl for internal use in some Madrid retouching operations; that licensing is unrelated to advertiser inventory. We do not accept payment to feature specific cameras, lenses, formats or pre-press partners.

Getting in touch

For partnership requests, advertising enquiries or press, please use the same e-mail address with a subject line that starts with “Press” or “Partnership”. We aim to reply within two business days.

Meet the editor