How to Resize an Image Without Losing Quality

When you reduce a picture, you throw away pixels you do not need, so the result stays crisp. When you enlarge it, the software has to invent new pixels by guessing from neighbors, so it looks soft or blocky. Start from the biggest original you have and only make it smaller.

Resizing by pixels is best when you have a target, such as a 1200 pixel wide blog image or a 1080 pixel Instagram post. Resizing by percent is handy when you simply want everything smaller: 50 percent halves the width and height, and the file ends up roughly a quarter of the size.

Aspect ratio is the proportion of width to height. If you change only one side without the other, the picture stretches and faces look wrong. Keep 'keep aspect ratio' on and type just the width or just the height. The other value follows automatically.

If you need an exact shape such as a square, crop first and then resize, instead of squeezing the picture.

'Fit inside' scales the image so it fits within a box without distorting it. 'Stretch' forces it to the exact dimensions, which distorts anything that does not match the box. Use stretch only when you are sure the proportions already match.

After you shrink the pixels, the file is usually already much smaller. A mild quality setting of 80 to 85 trims it further without visible damage. Doing both in one step avoids saving a lossy file twice.

Always keep the untouched original. You can make as many copies at different sizes as you like, but you cannot rebuild lost detail from a small copy.