How to Resize an Image Without Losing Quality

Almost every upload has a size rule: a width, a height, or a ratio. Resizing is simple in principle, but three choices decide whether the result looks professional: how you specify the size, what happens when the shape does not match, and whether you shrink or enlarge.

Three ways to set the size

The Image Resizer offers up to 30 images at once and three ways to say what size you want:

1. Pixels. Enter an exact width and height.
2. Percentage. Scale by a share of the original, for example 50 percent.
3. A social media preset. Pick a ready-made size such as:

Platforms change their recommended sizes from time to time, so treat presets as sensible starting points and check the platform's help page for a campaign.

Fit, fill or stretch

When the new shape differs from the original, you must choose what to do with the difference:

• Keep proportions (fit). The whole picture is kept and scaled to fit inside the size. Nothing is cut off, and one dimension may end up smaller than you asked for.
• Fill and crop. The picture is scaled to cover the exact size and the edges that do not fit are cropped. You get the exact dimensions with no distortion, at the cost of losing the edges.
• Stretch. The picture is forced to the exact size and is distorted. Use it only when you really want that, for example a texture.

For most uses, fit or fill is right. If the crop matters, use the Image Cropper to choose exactly which area to keep.

Sharper large reductions

Shrinking a picture by a very large factor in one jump can look harsh. The tool reduces it in steps of at most half at a time, which keeps detail sharper. You do not have to do anything; it simply gives a cleaner result.

Never enlarge for detail

Making an image bigger cannot add detail that is not there. A 400-pixel picture stretched to 1,600 pixels is blurry. The tool's limits are 10,000 pixels per side and 100 megapixels for the output, but the practical rule is to start from the largest original you have and only shrink.

Output format and quality

You can pick the output format and quality. JPG at 85 to 90 percent suits photographs. PNG keeps graphics and transparency exact. WebP gives smaller files for the web. Resizing is usually the biggest single saving in file size, so do it before any extra compression. For a size cap, follow with Compress Image to 100 KB or the Image Compressor.

Common jobs

• Website images. Resize to the width at which the image displays, or twice that for sharp phone screens. See how to compress images for faster websites.
• Marketplace listings. Use the platform's required size and a plain background.
• Email. Shrink to about 1,000 to 1,600 pixels on the long side.
• Forms. Match the stated dimensions, then check the kilobyte limit with photo size for application forms.