How to Resize An Image in Photoshop: A Comprehensive Guide

Summary: A step-by-step guide on how to resize an image in Photoshop. Plus, tips to help you successfully change the image size with Photoshop.

Resizing an image is one of the most commonly used skills in Photoshop. Whether you are a professional photographer or a new beginner lacking experience, learning how to resize an image in Photoshop is quite important to you.

There are many tools in Photoshop to help you enlarge or reduce the picture size. But how to choose the best tool and how to apply it to your picture? It may be a challenge.

In this article, we’ll show you a comprehensive guide on resizing an image in Photoshop, including resizing, upscaling, scaling down, and stretching the image. Now let’s start.

How to Resize An Image in Photoshop

There are many different ways to resize an image in Photoshop, but now I’d like to introduce the easiest as well as the most commonly used: Image Size Adjustment.

How to Resize Images in Photoshop with Image Resizer:

1. Open the image you want to resize in Photoshop, go to the top menu bar, and select Image> Image Size.
2. In the Image Size dialog, you can reset the image resizing parameters to resize your photo. Dimensions: You will have the option to adjust the dimensions of your photo based on your preferred measurement- pixels, inches, centimeters, etc. Click on the down arrow next to the Dimensions to view the current unit of measurement. Fit to: With this option, you can choose a preset to resize the image. You can choose a preloaded size from the drop-down menu. Or you can choose Auto Resolution to resize the image for specific printing output. Besides, there are other commonly seen parameters: Width and Height, Resolution, and Resample.
3. Most often you just need to enter your desired numbers in the Width and Height boxes. You can enter by percent, pixels, inch, and more. There is a focal point: if you click the chain icon on the left, you will link both values. When you change one value, Adobe image resizer will automatically adjust the other.
4. Resizing can be further divided into making an image bigger and making an image smaller. How to make an image bigger in Photoshop? To enlarge the image size, you just need to add the numbers of width and height. Remember not to click on the chain if you want to set the two values separately. As to the “Resample” here, choose “Preserve Details(2.0)”, this will improve the quality when you enlarge the size of an image. How to make an image smaller in Photoshop? Similarly, you just need to reduce the numbers of width and height to decrease the image size.
5. Don’t forget to keep the checkbox next to “Resample” selected. This can keep your image dimensions the same while adjusting the resolution.
6. As to resolution, there are two commonly used values: 72 pixels/inch for digital images or 300 pixels/inch for printed photos. Here I set the resolution to 300 pixels/inch to resize the image without losing quality.
7. Once done, click OK to apply the changes to your image. To fit the cropped image on the screen, go to the top menu bar, and select "View">"Fit on screen".

How to Scale An Image in Photoshop

Learning how to scale an image in Photoshop is another useful skill. Whether you want to scale down the image to reduce the page's loading time in web design, or scale up the image to stand out the details in photography. You can use the built-in tool in Photoshop: Zoom Tool to scale your image.

How to Scale Up and Scale Down An Image in Photoshop

1. Open your image in Photoshop, and select the “Zoom Tool” from the toolbar.
2. To scale up the picture, click on the “zoom in” tool in the options bar. Move the mouse to the image and click on the left mouse button.
3. To scale down the picture, click on the “zoom out” tool in the options bar. Hold down the left mouse button and the Alt Key to zoom the image inward.
4. Optionally, in the properties panel on the right side, you can enter your desired width and height. Add or reduce numbers to magnify or reduce the image.

How to Stretch An Image in Photoshop

In addition to resizing and scaling, stretching an image is also a commonly used skill when we process an image in Photoshop. Now let’s see how to stretch an image in Photoshop.

1. Before starting to stretch an image, first, we need to expand the canvas. This refers to adding extra space around your picture so that we can stretch the original picture.
2. Select “Image”> ”Canvas Size”. In the pop-up window, you can enter the numbers of width and height. Here I want to add the width to 940 pixels, so I enter 200 in the width box, and the height maintains the original.
3. Pay attention to “Anchor” here. The dot in the center represents your image, and the arrows around the dot refer to the added area based on your input. Once done, click OK and you can see there is space surrounding your image.
4. Then let’s start to stretch the image. Go up to the menu bar, and select “Edit”> ”Content-Aware Scale”. You can see several anchors surround your image. Simply drag the anchors to stretch your image to fill the transparent areas of the canvas. Here you can see, that even though we’ve stretched the background, the person in the middle doesn’t appear stretched. This makes the Content-Aware Scale a great option for stretching images.
5. Once done, click “Enter” on your keyboard to commit the transform.

Tips for Successfully Resizing Images in Photoshop

● Shortcut Keys to Resize An Image in Photoshop

Want to know how to change image size in Photoshop more quickly? You can use the short keys in Photoshop.

First, press "Ctrl+T" (Windows) or "Cmd+T" (Mac) to activate the Transform tool. Then, drag the corners to resize the image proportionally or hold down the Shift key while dragging a corner to keep the original aspect ratio. Optionally, press “Crtl+Alt+I” to change the image size.

● Batch Resize Images in Photoshop

Sometimes, you may have many images to resize. Changing the size of each image independently is definitely a troublesome and time-consuming work. Luckily, Photoshop can help you efficiently resize multiple images at once.

● Save Original Image Backups

Before resizing, saving the backups of your original image in Photoshop is necessary since this ensures you can revert to the original size if needed.

● Considering the End Use

Before resizing an image, it is important to consider its purpose and intended use. Website images, for example, are often resized for faster loading, so they must be smaller. When resizing images for print materials, however, you need to make sure they maintain a high resolution for good print quality.

By taking into account the specific needs of your resized images, you can effectively resize your images to achieve the best outcome and visual impact.

Quickly and Easily Resize An Image with Fotor

Above we’ve shared a step-by-step tutorial on how to resize in Photoshop. In addition to using Photoshop, there are also a variety of Photoshop alternatives you can use to resize images. Fotor is a great Photoshop alternative that offers a simple and user-friendly interface for resizing images. With it, you can easily change the size of images to suit your specific needs.

Here's how:

1. Open your web browser and go to the Fotor website: https://www.fotor.com/.
2. Upload the image you want to resize and select the "Resize" tool from the options.
3. You'll see options to adjust the dimensions of your image. You can choose from predefined dimensions or enter custom width and height values or percentages. Make sure to maintain the aspect ratio if you want to avoid distortion.
4. After resizing, you click "Apply"' to save the changes. You can then download your resized image to your computer in your desired format and quality settings.

That's it! Fotor offers a seamless experience for image resizing, whether you need to enlarge images or reduce the size of your images, you can do so in just seconds.

Conclusion:

In this article, we show you a comprehensive guide on how to resize an image in Photoshop, containing how to resize, scale, and stretch an image with the useful tools in Photoshop. However, if you prefer a simpler solution, Fotor's free online image resizer provides an easy and efficient way to get the job done. Give it a try and see how it can help streamline your image resizing tasks.

Thanks for reading! Hope you find these contents helpful.