Photoshop resize image to specific size, keep proportion?

Question

I'm struggling with this. I have a lots of (big) images that I need to re-size to a specific smaller dimension. The important thing is to keep the aspect ratio and don't do any weird stretching to the images. Empty space should be filled with my background color.

What I normally do is something like;

• Re-size canvas to 550x800.
• (the image is now bigger than the canvas)
• Use the transform tool with alt+shift (to re-size from center) until image fits perfectly into canvas size
• Fill transparent pixels with white background

This is too much custom work and doesn't really work with batch. Can I use Photoshop's image re-size or canvas re-size to do this?

My attempts have all failed. The image is either not the right size or with the right size but with weird stretching/transforming.

Answer 1

Now there is a tool that does exactly what you need, called CropToFit.

In your case, since you need to use the same 550x800 dimensions again and again, you can create a pre-set link, as I have done below. Just click this link and it will open with the dimensions pre-set:

Click here to Crop Image to 550x800

If you click the link above, you should get the page shown here:

In your case, you can select white fill by expanding the menu (click Advanced controls). CropToFit uses high quality resampling so the results should be as good as photoshop.

Disclaimer: I created CropToFit originally for my own needs since I do this all the time in iOS development and web development and I couldn't find a tool that does this well.

Answer 2

Use image>image size instead of image>canvas size. Just make sure you have constrain proportions ticked on.

****EDIT****

If you want your image to change ratio but you don't want it to look "squashed" then you won't be able to avoid either cropping your image or doing the opposite and adding in black bars like you see on movies to fill the rest of the ratio.

Answer 3

Use File->Automate->Fit Image and enter your desired image dimensions. Then use Image->Canvas Size and enter the desired image dimensions again. The canvas size adjustment should automatically fill the background in with your selected background color (if you have a background layer).

Answer 4

In Photoshop you can record an action that does something and repeat it for all open images. See the image below that shows the general gist of it.

However, batch processing in Photoshop feels abit like heavy lifting. I usually use Bimp Lite instead. It allows you to minimize alot of the tedious work of doing the same thing to plenty of images, for instance restrict to width resizing or watermarking.