Image Resizer

Resizing, Cropping and Scaling

Resizing changes how many pixels there are. Every pixel in the original contributes to the result, and the whole picture is still there, just recorded at a different resolution. This is what you want when an image is simply too large for where it is going.

Cropping throws pixels away. It cuts a rectangle out of the picture and discards everything outside it. The remaining pixels are untouched, but part of the scene is gone for good. Cropping is what you want when the composition is wrong, not when the file is too big.

Scaling in CSS changes nothing about the file. Setting a width in a stylesheet makes the browser draw the image smaller, but the visitor still downloads every original pixel. This is the single most common cause of slow image-heavy pages: a 4000-pixel photograph displayed in a 600-pixel column still costs the full download.

Resolution and DPI are separate ideas. A file has pixel dimensions; DPI only becomes meaningful when the image is printed, where it decides physical size. For anything shown on a screen, the pixel dimensions are what count and DPI can be ignored.

How to Resize an Image

Add files: Drag images onto the drop area, click to browse, or press Ctrl+V to paste from the clipboard. The dimensions of the first image are read automatically and used to fill the width and height fields, so the defaults reflect what you actually loaded.

Pick a mode: By pixels asks for a specific width and height, which suits a target such as a header image or a profile picture. By percentage scales every image by the same factor, which is the right choice for a batch of mixed sizes where you just want everything smaller.

Use the presets for common targets: Full HD, Instagram square and story, Open Graph and a square thumbnail are one click each. Open Graph at 1200 by 630 is the size social platforms expect for link previews.

Resize and download: Each row shows the original dimensions, the new dimensions and the resulting file size. The new dimensions are appended to the filename, so a batch stays sortable. Save one at a time or take the whole set as a ZIP.

Aspect Ratio and Why It Matters

Aspect ratio is width divided by height. A 1920 by 1080 image has a ratio of 16 to 9. Change one dimension without changing the other proportionally and the picture is distorted: faces widen, circles become ovals, text leans.

The lock does the arithmetic for you. With the ratio locked, typing a width fills in the height that preserves proportions, and the other way around. Leave it on unless you have a specific reason not to.

When target and source ratios differ, something has to give. Either the result does not completely fill your box, which is what Fit inside does, or the picture is distorted to fill it, which is what Stretch does. If you need both an exact size and no distortion, crop first and then resize.

Fit Inside Versus Stretch

Fit inside is the safe default. The image is scaled until it fits entirely within your width and height, keeping its proportions. A 4000 by 3000 photograph fitted into a 1920 by 1080 box comes out 1440 by 1080: as tall as the box allows, narrower than the box because the source is a different shape.

Stretch gives exactly what you asked for. The output matches your numbers precisely, at the cost of distortion whenever the ratios differ. It is genuinely useful for textures, backgrounds and placeholder assets where geometry does not matter.

Which to choose: Photographs of people, products or anything recognisable should use Fit inside. A stretched portrait is immediately obvious and looks careless. Reserve Stretch for abstract or generated imagery.

Why Enlarging Rarely Works

You cannot add detail that was never captured. Enlarging invents new pixels by interpolating between existing ones. The result is larger and softer, not sharper. A 400-pixel logo blown up to 1600 pixels looks blurry because there is no fine detail to recover.

Modest enlargement is acceptable. Up to about 150 percent, interpolation is usually good enough that nobody notices, particularly on photographs with soft gradients. Beyond roughly 200 percent the softness becomes obvious.

Vector formats are the real answer. If you need a logo or icon at many sizes, an SVG scales to any dimension with no loss at all, because it stores shapes rather than pixels. Ask for the vector original rather than enlarging a bitmap.

Common Sizes Worth Knowing

Website hero: 1920 pixels wide covers almost every laptop and desktop. Going to 2560 only helps on large high-density displays and costs everyone else bandwidth.

Article images: 1200 to 1600 pixels wide. Content columns are rarely wider than 800 CSS pixels, and doubling that covers high-density screens comfortably.

Social link previews: 1200 by 630 is the Open Graph standard used by Facebook, LinkedIn and most chat apps for link cards. Getting this wrong produces awkward cropping in previews you never see yourself.

Instagram: 1080 by 1080 for a square post and 1080 by 1920 for a story or reel. Uploading larger simply means the platform recompresses it, usually worse than you would.

Avatars and thumbnails: 400 by 400 is plenty for a profile picture, and product thumbnails work well between 400 and 600 pixels.

Keeping Quality While Resizing

Downscaling improves apparent sharpness. Averaging many source pixels into one output pixel hides noise and softness, which is why a reduced photograph often looks crisper than the original at full size. Reducing is nearly always safe.

This tool uses high-quality interpolation. The canvas is set to smooth at its highest setting, so reduction averages neighbouring pixels properly rather than simply dropping them, which is what produces jagged edges in cruder implementations.

Resize once, from the original. Each save of a lossy format such as JPEG discards a little more. Going 4000 to 2000 to 1000 in two steps looks worse than going straight to 1000. Keep your originals and resize from them each time.

Resizing and compression work together. Cutting dimensions reduces file size enormously on its own. If you also need a smaller file, run the result through an image compressor afterwards rather than compressing hard at full resolution.

Privacy and Metadata

Your images never leave the browser. There is no upload step and no copy on our side. Load the page, disconnect from the network, and the tool still resizes normally.

EXIF is dropped automatically. Redrawing on a canvas reproduces pixels only, so camera model, lens, exposure settings, capture time and GPS coordinates do not survive. For most people sharing photographs this is exactly what they want, often without realising the data was there.

Keep an original if you need the metadata. Photographers and anyone cataloguing images should hold on to untouched files, because that information cannot be recovered from a resized copy.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Resizing in CSS instead of resizing the file. Setting a width in a stylesheet changes what visitors see but not what they download. The bytes still cross the network.

Turning off the ratio lock by accident. Distortion is subtle on abstract images and glaring on faces. If a result looks slightly wrong but you cannot say why, check the ratio first.

Enlarging to meet a minimum size requirement. Upload forms that demand at least a certain width are checking quality. Feeding them an enlarged small image satisfies the check and produces a blurry result.

Resizing repeatedly from already-resized copies. Losses accumulate. Always go back to the original.

Frequently Asked Questions