How to resize an image without losing quality
“Without losing quality” means two different things: not distorting the picture, and not making it blurry. The first is a matter of keeping the aspect ratio. The second depends on whether you are making the image smaller or larger — one is nearly free, the other has a hard limit. This guide covers both, plus the settings that decide what happens when the new shape does not match the old one.
Downscaling is safe; upscaling is guesswork
Making an image smaller combines several source pixels into each new pixel. Done with a good filter, the result looks sharp — often sharper than the original at the same size, because noise averages out. Making an image larger has no new information to draw on; the software has to invent pixels, and the result is soft. Enlargement by 10–20% is usually invisible, 200% is visibly blurry, and no setting changes that.
That is why the cropper does not enlarge unless you ask it to. If a preset or a typed size is larger than your source, the export keeps the proportions at the largest size available and tells you so. Tick Allow enlargement only when a destination insists on a minimum size and a soft image is acceptable.
Keep the aspect ratio
Distortion — squashed faces, oval circles — comes from changing width and height by different factors. With Lock aspect ratio on, typing a new width calculates the matching height, so the picture cannot be stretched. Turn the lock off only when you deliberately want a different shape, and then choose how the mismatch is handled.
- Fit: the whole image is scaled to sit inside your width and height. Nothing is cut; the output may be smaller on one side than you typed.
- Fill: the image is scaled to cover the exact size and the overflow is cropped from the edges, centred.
- Pad: the whole image is placed inside the exact size and the remaining area is filled with a background colour — or left transparent in PNG and WebP.
- Stretch: the image is forced to the exact size and its proportions change. Use only for abstract patterns or when someone explicitly wants distortion.
Crop, then resize
The best-looking exact-size images are cropped to the right shape first, then scaled. Cropping chooses what stays in the frame; scaling only changes how big it is. In the cropper the frame is set with a ratio or exact pixel numbers, and the Resize panel starts from the cropped size, so an export that keeps the cropped size is a pure crop with no scaling at all.
Percentages, long side and DPI
Percentage resizing keeps the ratio by definition and is the quickest way to halve or quarter a batch. If a form asks for a maximum width or height rather than a fixed size, use the compressor’s Fit within setting, which bounds the long side and never enlarges.
DPI (dots per inch) is only meaningful for print. A screen shows pixels, not inches, so a 1,200 × 800 image looks the same at 72 or 300 DPI. For print, divide the desired inches into pixels at 300 DPI: a 4 × 6 inch print wants about 1,200 × 1,800 pixels.
Keeping it sharp after export
- Export a resized photo as JPG at quality 85–90 or as WebP; resizing then compressing hard is where visible blur usually comes from.
- Keep screenshots and graphics as PNG so scaled text stays crisp.
- Resize once, from the original. Resizing a resized image compounds the softness.
- Look at the result at 100% before downloading; a fit-to-screen preview hides softness.