How to resize an image
Add your images by dragging them in or clicking to browse.
Set the size. Type a width and height, or choose a preset for Instagram, YouTube, a passport photo, and so on. LeaveLock aspect on unless you specifically want to distort something.
Pick a mode. Fit keeps the whole image inside your box. Fill crops to hit the exact dimensions.
Resize and download, individually or as one ZIP.
Fit or Fill
Picking the wrong one here is the most common reason a resize comes out looking wrong.
Fit scales the image until all of it sits inside your width and height. Nothing gets cropped. The catch is that the result rarely matches your box exactly, since your image's proportions almost never match the target's. Fit a 3:2 photo into a square and you get 1080 by 720, not 1080 by 1080.
Fill goes the other way. It scales up until the image covers the box completely, then trims the overflow off the edges. Exact dimensions, minus some of your picture.
Use Fit when you need the whole image and the size can flex. Use Fill when the size is fixed, a square Instagram post or an avatar slot, and losing the edges is fine.
One warning on Fill: check portrait photos afterwards. Centre-cropping a tall photo into a square has a habit of removing the top of someone's head.
Making an image bigger does not add detail
Worth being blunt about this, because television has taught everyone otherwise.
Shrinking an image is a clean operation. You have more pixels than you need and you throw the extra ones away. The result is sharp because all the detail was really there.
Going the other way, there is nothing to work from. A 400 pixel wide photo enlarged to 1600 has to invent fifteen out of every sixteen pixels, and the software's only option is to guess from neighbouring pixels. You get a bigger file that looks soft and slightly plastic. No amount of enlarging recovers a licence plate from a blurry photo.
So always resize down from the largest original you have, rather than resizing up from something already small. If the only copy you have is small, a specialist upscaler using a trained model will do better than plain scaling, though it is still inventing detail rather than revealing it.
Passport photos have exact rules
Two inches square. That is 51 by 51 mm, or 600 by 600 pixels digitally.
What people miss is that the framing is specified too, not just the canvas. Your head has to measure between 1 and 1⅜ inches from the bottom of the chin to the top of your hair, which is 25 to 35 mm. Your eyes need to sit 1⅛ to 1⅜ inches up from the bottom edge, so 28 to 35 mm.
Get the canvas right and the framing wrong and it still comes back rejected.
Resizing alone cannot fix a photo taken from too far away, because scaling the image scales your head with it. Crop first so the head fills the right proportion of the frame, then resize the crop to 600 by 600.
The remaining rules govern the photo rather than its dimensions. Plain white or off-white background. Even lighting. Colour, never black and white. Taken within the last six months, which is the one people forget when they reach for an old file.
Sizes worth knowing
| Where | Size |
|---|---|
| Instagram square | 1080 x 1080 |
| Instagram portrait | 1080 x 1350 |
| Instagram story or reel | 1080 x 1920 |
| YouTube thumbnail | 1280 x 720 |
| Avatar or profile | 400 x 400 |
| US passport | 600 x 600 |
One thing that catches people building websites: phone and laptop screens are mostly high density now, packing two or three physical pixels into each CSS pixel. An image displayed in a 400 pixel wide slot on such a screen wants to be around 800 pixels wide, or it looks soft. Export at roughly double the display size for anything going on the web, then compress it.
Frequently asked questions
Will resizing stretch my photo?
Not with Lock aspect on. That keeps the original proportions, so Fit letterboxes and Fill crops instead of squashing. Turn it off and you can stretch deliberately, which is occasionally what you want.
Can I resize a whole batch to one size?
Yes. Add as many as you like, set the size or preset once, and take them all as a ZIP.
Why does my enlarged image look blurry?
Because the detail was never in the file. Enlarging invents pixels by guessing from their neighbours, which softens everything. Start from a bigger original wherever you can.
Which should I use, Fit or Fill?
Fit if you need the whole image and the exact size can flex. Fill if the dimensions are fixed and you can afford to lose the edges.
What size is a US passport photo?
Two inches square, 600 by 600 pixels digitally, with your head measuring 1 to 1⅜ inches from chin to the top of your hair.
Does resizing reduce file size?
Yes, substantially, because you are removing pixels. Halving the width quarters the pixel count. Run the result through a compressor if you need it smaller still.
Related: compress after resizing · crop to frame a passport photo · convert format · remove the background