Resize an image
Scale a picture to a width, a height, or an exact canvas.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
Keeping proportions
Set only a width or only a height and the other is worked out for you, so nothing is distorted. Set both and pick letterboxing to keep the shape with padding around it, or turn letterboxing off to stretch the picture into the box.
Sizes worth knowing
- 1200 px wide: a full-width image in a blog post or article.
- 1080 × 1080: a square social post.
- 1200 × 630: the link preview image most platforms crop to.
- Under 500 KB: a reasonable ceiling for anything on a page people load on mobile data.
Scaling down is safe, scaling up is not
Making a picture smaller throws away information, and because there was more of it than the new size needs, the result is clean. This is the single most effective way to reduce a file, and it works on area rather than on width: halving both dimensions removes three quarters of the pixels. A 4000 px photograph reduced to 1200 px is typically a tenth of the size and looks perfect at its new size.
Making a picture larger cannot add detail that was never captured. Interpolation invents plausible pixels between the real ones, which produces a larger, smoother image and not a sharper one. It is worth doing when something specifically demands a minimum size, and it is not worth doing in the hope of rescuing a small image. For that case the upscaler uses Lanczos resampling, which is about as good as interpolation gets, and it is still interpolation.
Letterbox or stretch
When you set both dimensions and the target shape does not match the source, something has to give. Letterboxing keeps the picture's proportions and pads the difference, so nothing is distorted and you get bars. Turning it off stretches the image into the box, which distorts anything recognisable and is almost always the wrong choice, particularly with people in the frame.
There is a third option the tool does not do, which is cropping to fill: keeping the shape and cutting off the overflow. If that is what you want, crop handles it for video, and for stills the practical route is to resize to cover the target and then crop.
Where the size actually goes
People reach for quality when the file is too big, and resolution is usually the better lever. Dropping a photograph from 3000 px to 1500 px saves far more than moving quality from 90 to 70, and it costs nothing visible if the image is never displayed larger than 1500 px. Get the dimensions right first, then set quality, and check the result rather than assuming. On a web page, an image displayed 600 px wide should not be 3000 px wide in the file, however good the compression is.
Common questions
Will enlarging a small image sharpen it?
No. Scaling up spreads the pixels you have over a larger area. It cannot add detail that was never captured.
Why do I end up with white bars?
Letterboxing is on and your target shape does not match the source. Turn it off to stretch, or set only one dimension.