[Gimp-user] How to shrink photo, retain quality?? Business card design

[JoeyF <forums gimpusers com>]

Hi guys!

I'm an amateur photo-editor, and have a decent understanding of Gimp basics.

I am designing a business card for myself to be uploaded to gotprint.com

I am using a 2.5inx3.5in. vertical layout. In the past I have used the basic
online editor provided by gotprint to design a logo, this time I wanted to do it
on Gimp to leave myself more options for editing.

I need to include a photo of myself on the card. I have a hq photo taken by a
Canon DSLR, and it looks great. When I create a new project on Gimp to the
specific size of 2.5"x3.5" I have to shrink the image down, as it is around
2800x4200 pixels. Whenever I do this I lose A LOT of quality.

On the gotprint editor I don't lose any quality, it uploads and looks as sharp
as ever. I've researched ways to sharpen the image before resizing, using online
resizing tools and even increasing the size of the image on Gimp from 2.5"x3.5"
to something much bigger as to accommodate the photo, however the file size
becomes too large to handle.

How can I shrink a large photo of myself at 2800x4200 pixels to fit vertically
on a business card that is 2.5"x3.5" (around 200x150 pixels) without losing
quality? I know whenever an image is resized quality will be lost, so how to
other companies fit images of people on business cards that look good?

I greatly appreciate any and all help- I'm hoping to find a solution to this
seemingly small problem soon.

Thank you!!

-- 
JoeyF (via www.gimpusers.com/forums)