However, we strongly recommended resizing images in photo editors, such as Photoshop or GIMP, to achieve maximum photo quality.
For example, if you upload a very large image to a website and scale it down to a smaller size, the website still must load the full size version of that image and could cause the web page to load more slowly. Scaling images smaller than the original dimensions does not affect quality as much, but can have other side effects. Once I have my Scale tool selected, I can click on the top layer of my composition (in this case, the Pink layer). I can also access this tool by hitting Shift+S on my keyboard or by going to Tools>Transform Tools>Scale (denoted by the green arrow).
The most common side effect of scaling an image larger than its original dimensions is that the image may appear to be very fuzzy or pixelated. To do this, I’ll use the Scale Tool from my Toolbox (denoted by the red arrow in the photo above). When scaling, the resolution is not adjusted to best suit the new size, rather the pixels are stretched and can appear pixelated.
Interested in video editing? See which providers we rated highly in our guide to the best video editing software (opens in new tab), find out how to learn video editing (opens in new tab), and discover how to edit videos for free (opens in new tab).When working with raster images (pixel-based) it is important to understand that scaling an image in programs, such as Word, Powerpoint, InDesign, or Dreamweaver, does not actually resize the image, but rather stretches images larger or scales them smaller. When it comes to photography, you'll want to safely store your prized images somewhere safe and secure: take a look at our guides to the best photo storage apps (opens in new tab) and the best cloud storage for photos (opens in new tab), and find an app or service with which to back-up your edited pictures. If you're not keen on that idea, then you'll just have to crop that object down as best you can, and live with whatever bits are missing. You'll now have much more space to draw your 4:3 box, and it should fit (if not, you can make the background even bigger by simply doing this process over again).Įven if you don't have a white background to work with, you can still use this method to crop to 4:3 (or whatever ratio), it's just that you'll have white borders. Then click "Image" from the top menu again, and then "Flatten Image". Now click the "Centre" button, and then "Resize". Click the broken chain-link to the right of the "Width" and "Height" boxes, so it becomes linked and these measurements are kept in proportion, and then double (or perhaps even treble if you need to create a lot of extra white space) the number in one of them (it doesn't matter which – they'll both double up as they're linked). To do this, select "Image" from the top menu, and click "Canvas Size". With a white background, you can simply make that white background larger to give you more space to crop, so you're not chopping bits of the phone off. Say you've got an image of a smartphone on a white background, but when cropping to 4:3 you're cutting the top and bottom bezels off the handset, so it looks silly. Scale with a white backgroundīut what if your image is a non-square shape with so much difference between the vertical and horizontal pixel size that you can't actually fit the central object of the picture fully into the 4:3 box? You can then scale it to the correct size as we discussed above (via the "Scale Image" menu). Now you can draw your 4:3 box on the image, adjust it to your liking, then click in the middle of it to crop the picture down to a 4:3 image. Now, click in the box directly underneath where you just ticked, and type in the aspect ratio you want, in this case "4:3" (without the quote marks, of course). There's a little box next to where it says "Fixed (Aspect Ratio)" – tick this.
To make this box keep to a 4:3 ratio, you'll need to look in the Toolbox window, under the Tool Options section where it says "Crop". To crop the image to 4:3 (or whatever ratio you want), select the "Crop" tool (Shift+C) which allows you to draw a box on your picture.
Maybe you want to scale your image to a specific size, to fit, say, your blog site? On IT Pro Portal, for example, we use article header images with a 4:3 ratio, so let's do that as an example.