So, you’re building a website with an image slider and your pictures need to be exactly a certain size, without being distorted or stretched. Or, perhaps you need to reduce image file sizes so your website loads faster. Or maybe you just want your Facebook profile picture to be fitted, framed, and crisp. There is a whole host of reasons you may need to resize images, so it’s worthwhile to know how to do it properly, quickly, easily, and for free!
A great free online picture editor is Pixlr. To begin using Pixlr, first go to: www.Pixlr.com
Next you’ll see three large boxes waiting to be selected; Editor, Express, and O-Matic. For picture editing, we will be using the Editor.
If your goal is to resize an image, locate your image and upload it by selecting “open image from computer”. Now your picture will load into Pixlr’s window and will be surrounded by a set of tools at your disposal on the menu bar and down the left side of the window.
Before going any further, you’ll need to stop what you’re doing and find out the exact dimensions of the space you want your picture to properly fit. Keep in mind that pictures are generally measured in pixels.
Assuming the picture you want to resize isn’t exactly the same shape as the frame or space you want to load it into, you need to decide if you should crop (cut) your picture on the top and bottom (to make it shorter and wider) or crop it from the sides (to make it narrower and taller). Once you’ve decided, you’ll want to click on “image” in the top menu bar in Pixlr. From there you can choose the image size tool or the canvas size tool.
Crop tool cuts your picture down, so slices of the edges of the picture are removed, as though you were cutting them off with scissors so they will fit a particular frame. This will change the shape of the picture, so figure out if the picture needs to be wider or taller. If you would like to shrink the image, use the canvas tool. This will allow you to augment the size of the image based on minimizing the entire picture.
If you found the exact size of the frame you wish to load your picture into, you can change the canvas size by either length or width by entering the corresponding pixel amount. Once you enter an amount of pixels for either the length or width, the remaining length will change automatically so the picture is still proportioned properly and not stretched, squeezed, or distorted.
Once your done resizing your image, save it to you computer. Save is as PNG file as they are usually better optimized for the internet.