In this guide we’re mixing up a tasty cocktail of theory and practice on how to resize an image in Photoshop. This is a skill you will use on pretty much on any Photoshop project you begin. We’ll start with some basic but fundamental concepts like pixels, resolution, and dimensions. With the theory box checked off, we’ll jump into Photoshop so you can learn the tools and techniques to reshape your compositions into works of digital art. Grab your notebooks, bring your laptops, and let’s get to it!
Before We Start This step-by-step guide is based on my Photoshop Advanced Training Course lessons. When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges.
What is a Pixel?
What is a pixel? Have you ever zoomed into a photo until all you can see are tiny colored squares? A pixel is one of those squares. It’s the smallest measurable unit that can be displayed on your computer or mobile screen. Pixels can be joined together to form those images, shapes, text, or videos that you can find all around you. Photoshop manipulates these little guys by adding and subtracting them or changing their color values until you reach the result you are looking for. It’s brilliant stuff, a whole universe shifting back and forth beneath your screen’s surface.
What is image resolution?
Now let’s discuss resolution or pixel density. We know that higher resolution means more detail. But why does it work that way? Resolution is measured in “ppi = pixels per inch” - or the number of pixels that combine in an inch to build, let’s say, an image. Have a look at this 5 x 5 inches photo of a flower, displayed at a resolution of 300 ppi. If we zoomed in on it, we’d count a first horizontal line of 1500 pixels. We could do the same on the first vertical line: 1500 pixels. Left: detail of the 5x5 inches photo. What happens when we change the “ppi” value? If we downsize it to keep its 5 x 5 inches, but displayed at a resolution of 72 ppi, we’d count 360 pixels horizontal and 360 pixels vertical, right? Left: detail of the 5x5 inches photo. It’s a huge difference, right? Is this bad? Well, it depends on the use you have planned for it. If it’s meant to be something as small as a profile avatar for social media, it should be fine.
What if you want to enlarge a certain detail to fit your composition or print it and hang it on a wall? It’s a dimension thing! Our flower’s dimensions were 5 x 5 inches (or 12.7 x 12.7 centimeters, 127 x 127 millimeters, etc.), but could be also measured by pixels: 1500 x 1500. A higher number of pixels in an image means you can change its dimensions with a lower loss of quality and detail. On the other hand, lower pixel numbers means more degraded (a.k.a. “pixelated”) results.
Resizing an Image vs Resampling an Image
Now that you have the basics down, what happens to pixels when we change the size of an image? To keep it simple, you can resize or resample an image. These two get confused a lot and both processes are usually called resizing - and Photoshop may be the reason for that, now. The difference lies in changing or not changing the number of pixels in it. When you resize images, you don’t change the number of pixels in the image. When you resample images, you ask Photoshop to change this number, by adding or subtracting pixels as you’re upscaling or downscaling it. To keep this simple, let’s focus on resizing with help from the “Resample” option. It represents a huge evolution in Photoshop, making editing easier and more efficient. That’s why it must get front stage.
I don’t mention this distinction in my Photoshop Advanced Training course but I thought it could be a cool thing for you to know and - why not? - even impress a friend or two. Using what we’ve learned so far, we are ready to dive into resizing images in Photoshop!
Timeout #1 We’ve been talking about image editing in Photoshop. Step 1 - How to use the Image Size tool This is where it all begins - your starting point for small adjustments or billboard enlargements. The Image Size window pops up and you’ll find some settings and an image preview that reflects the changes you are about to define. The first two items give you the information you need to begin with:
- Image Size: This is the image’s file size, the space it requires on your disk drive or cloud service. Remember that heavy file sizes demand higher performances from your computer, so it’s important to keep an eye on this. By the way, file size isn’t only affected by pixel dimensions! Consider other factors like file type, bit depth, number of layers, among others.
- Dimensions: You know what this is, now - your image’s size in pixels. If you’re using your image on an online project, you’ll want to work with pixels. For printing, you will consider inches or millimeters, these are the values that printers and clients usually prefer.
Next, we find our settings:
- Fit to: These are some presets for common online and print solutions - they automatically redefine both dimensions and resolution and are great for daily and simple image editing.
- Width and Height: You can set up your desired image dimensions here, adjusting to different values, such as pixels, inches, points, percentage, etc. You won’t be using percentage much, it’s good for small adjustments based on simple math. See that link icon next to “Width” and “Height”? Click on it if you want to keep the image’s aspect ratio. It’s ok if you don’t, it always depends on your goal, but remember that you may end up with some distorted results.
- Resolution: We’ve seen this, too. Your image’s pixel density - and you know the more you have, the better it will look both printed or on screen. Relax, you don’t always need a large number for good results. For online use, you can usually shine bright with 72 ppi. In this project, we’re aiming for 300dpi or higher.
- Resample: Remember resampling? This option controls how Photoshop works behind the curtain (by adding or subtracting pixels to your image) as it helps you keep maximum quality and detail. “Automatic” is, by default, everyone’s favorite, but understanding the other settings will make you a better designer, for sure, and give you a higher influence on your work’s outcome. We’ll check out its many possibilities further down the road.
We’ll also have a useful preview window on the left that displays the changes you perform on your image as you make them. You can enlarge it by clicking and dragging from one of the windows’ corners.
Step 2 - Width, Height, and Resolution
Now that we know what we can do with Image Size, let’s start transforming our photo into a marketing showstopper. Let’s work on its dimensions. Our sample brief is calling for a billboard, so let’s change the width from 2000 to 8000 pixels. See how the Height changed as well? This means our image is holding its aspect ratio constrained and our model won’t get all stretchy and funny in the end. Leave resolution at 300 ppi, we want to keep the pixel density high because this is going for print.
Step 3 - How to Resample in Photoshop!
This is what dreams are made of! Now we ask Photoshop to play with pixels by adding new ones (yes, it’s true!) or throwing away the ones you don’t need anymore. Make sure Resample is active by clicking on the checkbox. Automatic is there for speed, but these are all the selections available:
- Automatic: Pick this and Photoshop will do the choosing for you. Great for average enlargements and reductions, but tricky when you want to go big!
- Preserve Details (enlargement): The most common choice when you enlarge an image, as it also allows you to reduce noise and smooth up the result when necessary.
- Preserve Details 2.0: A good choice for enlargement, as Photoshop will handle pixels to keep the highest possible level of detail. It also allows for noise reduction.
- Bicubic Smoother (enlargement): This is expected to deliver strong and smooth results when enlarging an image.
- Bicubic Sharper (reduction): Fit for sharp and detailed results on reduction resizing.
- Bicubic (smooth gradients): A smart option for sharper images or when Bicubic Sharper goes a bit too far.
- Nearest Neighbor (hard edges): It delivers fast but less precise results as this option acts by replicating nearest pixels to preserve hard edges.
- Bilinear: With medium-quality results, Bilinear adds pixels based on the average color of surrounding pixels.
Try adjusting your choice to the image you are resizing and consider how it is going to be displayed. One good call for one image may not be perfect for a different image. Try them all, if you must, and then decide which is best. For our sample brief, let’s use Preserve Details (enlargement)”. This selection gives us an extra option, “Reduce Noise”.
Timeout #2 Take a quick break to learn about the importance of a photo editor’s work in the media industry and why even top photographers need to keep a close relationship with these “invisible” artists.
Step 4 - How to Use Multiple Views in Photoshop
Want to speed up your workflow? You can compare multiple resampling versions at the same time, check every detail with no effort - or extra screen? Go to your top Menu bar, select “Layer” and then “Duplicate Layer…”. A new window will pop up. On “Destination” click on the drop-down box and pick “New”. Name your new layer “Option 1” (or any other name you prefer) and click “OK”. You can now close the original. Let’s do it in a non-destructive way. You will end up with three open document tabs over your workspace. Repeat this guide’s steps 2 and 3 on all of them, picking one different Resampling option for each. Now let’s compare them all at the same time!
Method 1 - The Skipping Stones Cycle through the open documents with the shortcut Control + Tab on a PC or Command + Tab on a Mac. Method 2 - The Gallery Go to your top Menu bar, select “Window”, move to “Arrange” and click on “3-Up Vertical”. Extra tips: You can move each image around by using your Hand tool (hold Spacebar and drag). You can align them all on the same point by setting up the first and then go to “Window”, move to “Arrange” and pick “Match All”. You can move them all at once by holding Spacebar + Shift and dragging.
Step 5 - Go for the winner!
After careful observation, you hold the best result as a winning prize. This is it - we’ve covered the basics to image resizing or resampling. Image editing programs like Adobe Photoshop can give you resolution information and allow you to change the resolution of an image. 1. 2. 3. 4. This lets Photoshop know that we do not want to add or subtract any pixels to the photo. Adding and subtracting pixels is what happens when we resize images (to enlarge or shrink them). To change resolution we are NOT changing the number of pixels in the photo, but changing only how many of those pixels will be displayed per inch. 5. 6. Congratulations! In this example, we had an image with a 300ppi resolution. I wanted to print this image in a professional publication and the image needed to be at least 600ppi. The Pixel Dimensions have stayed the same because we did not add or subtract any pixels to the image. However, note that the Document Width and Height decreased by half when the Resolution doubled. As you may have guessed, our Document Width and Height doubled when we halved our Resolution. We notice that the pixel dimensions never change. We started with an image at 3000 x 2000 pixels (px) and ended with the dimensions still being 3000 x 2000px. Imagine you and a friend each having a bucket full of 5000 seeds to plant in a field. You must use all 5000 of your seeds by planting them in 1 inch squares in a field. Now imagine that you are allowed to plant only 150 of your seeds per inch and your friend is allowed to plant 300 seeds per inch. 72ppi: The document size is so large that it cannot fit onto an 8.5 x 11 sheet and is clipped. Which one to choose? The 72ppi and 150ppi images are too low of quality to produce a high-quality print, so they're out. The 300ppi and 600ppi images both looked very crisp, but the 600ppi image was way too small. Discover what pixel resampling, upsampling, and downsampling mean and how they can affect the look of your photo. Find the step-by-step instructions to increasing image control and quality by using Super Resolution in Lightroom or adjusting resolution in Photoshop. It’s a familiar scene: A detective asks someone to “enhance” a blurry image on a computer until it becomes clear enough to make out a key piece of evidence. Does this work? It used to be that the only way to resize a smaller photo into a larger, high-resolution image without highlighting poor image quality was to take a new photograph or re-scan your image at a higher resolution. But today, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom have features that can help you increase resolution while upholding visual quality.
Every digital image has a certain number of pixels. The more pixels an image starts with, the higher the resolution. Decreasing the number of pixels is called downsampling, which removes data from your image. Increasing the number of pixels is called upsampling, which adds data to the image. Sometimes photographers will downsample images to save storage space or make load times faster for online images. Chances are that you won’t want to play the guessing game with photo resolution, especially for images you want to print. That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) come in handy. Say you snapped a great photo of your friend in a group portrait, and your friend wants to turn it into their new headshot. But cropping a small section of a photo and increasing its size typically leads to major pixelation - and that's probably not the look your friend wants. But with Super Resolution, you can get four times the pixel count in any photo with the click of a button. And it’s not just any pixels - Photoshop and Lightroom use AI and ML to choose the best-looking pixels for the context of every image.
One of the fastest ways to improve lower-resolution images and get a high-quality print is using Super Resolution in Lightroom. With this feature, you don’t need to worry about resizing your image to get the quality you’re looking for. Lightroom will look at the context of your picture and automatically choose the best-looking pixels to add, doubling the image in size and quadrupling the pixel count. Lightroom will increase your image resolution and save it as a new DNG file. If you want even more control over your image resolution, you can use Super Resolution in Photoshop. But maybe you need to make a big change to the size of your original image, or you have to add a specific number of new pixels. That’s when traditional resampling is your best choice.
There are two methods you can try. If you have specific needs for the dimensions or size of your image - like a poster at a certain print size - check the Resample box. This allows you to adjust the print size and resolution independently, which changes the number of pixels in the image. Under Dimensions, enter values for Width and Height. If your image has layers with styles applied to them, select Scale Styles under the gear icon to scale the effects. See if you can achieve a high-quality print by adjusting only the dimension or resolution without changing pixel count. Photoshop will automatically change the other value for you, keeping the aspect ratio and number of pixels the same. Deselect Resample. To adjust Resolution, add new values. To adjust Document Size, add new values under Height and Width. Resampling of any kind, especially upsampling, can result in poorer image quality. But if you know the right interpolation method to choose - that is, the specific way software like Photoshop choose the color values of new pixels - you can minimize any unwanted pixelation. Good for enlarging images.
The best way to get high-resolution images is by using the right camera for the job. But when that’s not an option - or you’re looking to improve older digital photos - Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom can help. Experiment with Super Resolution, resampling and even an AI image upscaler to see how far you can push your image quality. Creating high-resolution files for print production may be a big part of your professional workflow, especially if you're a graphic artist or print production specialist. If you're given low-resolution files and asked to turn them into high-resolution versions, you'll get better results if you can start with natively high-resolution files. Some low-resolution files can become high resolution without losing quality, depending on the size you need. However, in some cases, you’ll need to upsize the file to meet your resolution requirements.
Reinterpret Resolution Open your file in Adobe Photoshop and press Shift-Ctrl-I to bring up the Image Size dialog box. Check the Document Size section in the dialog box. If the width and height measurements are large but the resolution is 72 pixels per inch, your image was probably created with a digital camera. Uncheck the Resample Image box and change the resolution to 300 ppi. At the top of the dialog box, you’ll notice the Pixel Dimensions-the width, height, and file size-stay the same, but the width and height in the Document Size section will shrink. For example, an 8-bit RGB image that measures 25 inches by 16.667 inches at 72 ppi will measure 6 inches by 4 inches at 300 ppi, but the file size will still be 6.18MB. Click OK to apply the changes. Review your image. Its size and appearance won’t change because you’ve simply told Photoshop to reinterpret the resolution, not increase it. Instead of having a very large, low-resolution image, you’ll now have a smaller, high-resolution one.
Increase Resolution Open your file in Adobe Photoshop and press Shift-Ctrl-I to bring up the Image Size dialog box. Check the Resample Image box and set the resolution to 300 ppi. This time, you’ll notice the Pixel Dimensions at the top of the dialog box increase, while the width and height in the Document Size section stay the same. For example, an 8-bit RGB image that is 432 pixels wide by 288 pixels high at 72 ppi will still measure 6 inches by 4 inches at 300 ppi, but it will now have dimensions of 1800 pixels by 1200 pixels. The file size will increase from 364.5KB to 6.18MB. Click OK to apply the changes. Check your image window and quality. Because you increased the resolution and file size, your image window will look larger. However, this comes with some pixelation, as Photoshop has interpolated new pixels to enlarge the image.
Latest Features in Photoshop for Image Resizing and Quality Enhancement Recent versions of Adobe Photoshop have introduced advanced features that make resizing and upscaling images more effective, while helping to maintain image quality. Super Resolution: This feature uses artificial intelligence to dramatically increase an image’s resolution, effectively doubling its width and height while preserving details. It’s particularly useful for enlarging photos without introducing noticeable pixelation or artifacts. Preserve Details 2.0: This improved resampling algorithm helps retain sharpness and clarity when resizing images. Available in the Image Size dialog box, it works to reduce artifacts and improve the overall quality of the upscaled image. Updated Image Size Dialog Box: The redesigned Image Size dialog box now includes a real-time preview feature. This lets you see the effects of your resizing adjustments immediately, making it easier to achieve precise results. AI-Powered Upscaling: Photoshop’s machine learning technology enables you to upscale low-resolution images with minimal effort, enhancing them into higher-quality versions while maintaining detail and clarity.
Tips
- Sharpen your image after you increase resolution, not before. If you sharpen first, you may introduce artifacts that reduce quality after enlargement. Sharpening afterward can help counteract some of the softening caused by enlargement.
- Always double-check client-supplied images from digital cameras. Most will have large dimensions at low resolution. When you use these files in a page layout, they may appear to be large but will need adjustments to meet your resolution needs.
Final Thoughts
Improving image quality in Photoshop CC is an essential skill for graphic artists and print production specialists, especially when working with files that need to meet high-resolution requirements. Whether you're reinterpreting resolution to optimize existing image dimensions or increasing resolution for print production, Photoshop offers a range of tools and techniques to achieve professional results.
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