In addition to its many tools, Photoshop also offers several ways to resize your images – whether you want to increase or decrease the size, extend the margins, or just make sure your image conforms to the new aspect ratio settings. Photoshop is considered the pinnacle of image editing and manipulation. To take advantage of other great Creative Cloud apps you may be using, resizing your images in Photoshop allows you to use them in other projects and for different purposes.
This is the best option to maintain quality
Using Photoshop's Image Size feature is the easiest way to resize your images, and it's also the best for maintaining quality. This technique should be used when you're happy with the aspect ratio of the image on the artboard, or it can be done after cropping to a ratio. In the top menu, navigate to Picture, Then Image size to open the window.
Here you can see the dimensions of your original image. You can change the scale to whatever you like, including pixels, centimeters, millimeters, percent, points, or picas. Photoshop's default is pixels, and the default resolution is PI – pixels per inch. The default scaling is locked, meaning when the width is changed, the height follows the ratio. You can unlock the ratio, but be aware that this can cause distortion, making any image look bad.
Under Adapt tothere is a dropdown menu of common ratios – or those saved in your Photoshop settings. Using these ratios will not distort your image; instead, it will be scaled to the smallest appropriate scale that fits your selection.
To customize the size based on more specific sizes, enter one of your size details in the Height or Width field, and the other will adjust to match the aspect ratio of your image.
While digital images do not require a higher resolution than 72 PPI, for printing or higher quality, enter '300' in the resolution box before changing your resize dimensions. This will ensure that your resized image is of high quality, which you can view in the preview box before selecting OK.
If you want to scale images on a large scale, a higher performance computer system will give you the best results and prevent Photoshop from freezing. Adobe products work great on both the best Macs and Windows PCs.
Crop your image in the correct proportion
Resizing an image doesn't always mean making it larger or smaller. Sometimes your image needs to fit a specific aspect ratio—for example, 1:1 for Instagram or 2:1 for certain web images. Instead of compressing your image to fit within those boundaries, you can crop off unwanted edges to achieve the correct size and aspect ratio.
Select the harvest tool to display the crop marks. You can choose to crop by eye and drag the crop anchors inward on any side, or choose a ratio from the toolbar above the artboard.
When you select a ratio, the crop marks will adjust to that ratio, but you can still move the crop selection to fit different areas of your image. The corners can also be dragged in or out if you want to crop tighter or looser while maintaining the same ratio parameters.
Cropping your image will make the photo itself smaller, but it won't reduce the overall size. To reduce the size of your image, use the image size tool mentioned above to change dimensions and scale.
Resize your image with Crop and Generative Expand
Resize your image with new borders and a new background
Like Photoshop's Generative Fill tool, which lets you remove or replace elements of your images—like a single piece of trash on the ground or accidental photobombers in the background—you can also use Generative Expand to resize your image and improve composition. Both tools use Adobe Firefly's technology to intelligently color parts of your artboard based on the rest of your image.
Use Generative Expand to resize your image when you need to reshape the edges, such as adding more sky to the top of a photo or extending your landscape image so it has a better aspect ratio. Overall, you can use Generative Expand to improve compositions, better match aspect ratios, and resize your image.
- Open your image and select the harvest (C) tool to display the crop marks and margins.
- Drag the crop edges outside the current boundaries and use the gridlines to set the composition of your image. If you set a ratio above, the crop marks will maintain that ratio as you expand.
- In the Generative expansion Fill in the input field or leave it blank. Then select Generate. A blank prompt box identifies the bulk of your current image, especially the edges near the extended boundaries, and generates images that fit perfectly.
- Choose one of three generated results that matches your newly expanded and scaled image.
Generative Expand allows you to expand and resize your images in a non-destructive way. It's a great tool if your photo isn't quite fit for purpose and you don't want to crop it any further.
Transform an image to change its size in your Photoshop project
The previous steps were about resizing all the elements in your Photoshop artboard, assuming the scaled element is the end result, but if you have multiple image layers, you can easily resize individual images in your project.
Select the layer where your image is located, and then select the image with the Move Tool (V). This will ensure that no other elements are selected and you are only changing the size of this element. Then go to Edit > Free Transformation (cmd + T / Ctrl + T) or select Transform > scaleBoth offer the same ability to resize selected elements.
Click and drag any of the anchor points to resize your image. To maintain proportions and avoid stretching and distortion, make sure Aspect ratio lock is turned on — you will find it as a link symbol between H And B in the top toolbar.
When aspect ratio is off, you can maintain the aspect ratio by holding down cmd/Ctrl when scaling up or down.
Photoshop offers many options for resizing images
Although the Image Size tool is the standard for resizing images and is the best way to change the dimensions of the final output, Photoshop provides other tools that can help with different resizing results. Whether you're cropping or enlarging the edges of your image, or resizing an image across your entire project, Photoshop's tools make each of these options easy.