How to Resize an Image Without Making It Blurry

Making it smaller is safe

When you shrink a picture, it stays sharp, because you are throwing away extra detail. This is the normal case, for example reducing a large camera photo for a website or email.

Making it bigger has limits

When you enlarge a picture, the tool can only stretch what is already there. The result looks softer. If you must make a picture larger, do not go far beyond its original size.

How to resize

• Open Resize Image and add one or more pictures.
• Choose to resize by pixels or by percent.
• For pixels, enter the width and height. Keep the picture in proportion to avoid a stretched look.
• Press the button and download the resized pictures.

Keep the proportions

If you set both width and height by hand without keeping the proportion, people in the picture can look wider or thinner. When the shape must change, crop first with Crop Image, then resize.

Common mistakes

• Enlarging a small picture a lot and expecting it to stay sharp.
• Setting width and height separately and stretching the picture.
• Resizing before cropping.
• Overwriting the only copy of the original.

Making a picture smaller is safe, making it bigger is not

When you reduce the dimensions of a picture, the tool removes pixels and the image stays sharp. When you enlarge it, the tool has to invent pixels, and the result looks soft or blocky. Whenever possible, start from the largest original and shrink to the size you need.

Lock the aspect ratio

Changing only the width or only the height stretches the picture. Lock the aspect ratio so both change together. If the destination needs a different shape, such as a square, crop first and then resize, rather than squeezing the picture.

Choosing a sensible size

Match the size to where the image will be used. A picture on a web page rarely needs more than about 1600 pixels wide. A social media post works well at around 1080 pixels. Photos for printing need many more pixels, so keep the original for that. Save the resized picture under a new name so the original stays safe.

Resize for the platform

Each platform has a preferred size. A blog header might be 1200 pixels wide, a social post 1080 pixels, a product photo 1000 to 2000 pixels, and an email banner around 600 pixels. Uploading a much larger picture wastes data, and the platform will shrink it for you, often with worse quality than you would get yourself.

Resize first, then compress, then check the result on the screen where people will see it. When you work in this order, you get the sharpest picture for the smallest file.

For pictures that may be used again in a bigger format, keep the full size original in a separate folder.

Frequently asked questions