Video:Elements Tutorial: How to Resize an Image or Canvas

Transcript:Elements Tutorial: How to Resize an Image or Canvas

Hi, I’m Pelpina Trip, here for About.com. Resizing an image or canvas is pretty simple in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Constrain Setting for Resizing Images

When you’re in the editor workspace in Photoshop Elements, go to image (right up here), then choose resize, and pick image size. That opens up this image size box. The pixel dimensions you see up here are basically the amount of pixels on this particular image width and height - that really depends on the quality photos your camera takes. This document size is the final print size.

So this is where we’ll need to make some changes. You can put in any value in these two boxes, and change inches to percent, centimeters, or millimeters - whatever you prefer. You’ll notice that as you change one of thes values, the other two will change too. That’s because we have constrain proportions checked. This lets you maintain the original aspect ratio of the image - so it won’t stretch in strange ways. If you uncheck this, you can make any changes without automatically changing the other two values.

Resize Images and Maintain the Resolution

With the resample image option down here you can change the size of a picture, without altering its resolution - that can be handy if you’re looking to print at a set resolution for example. Just keep in mind that resampling can significantly lower the quality of your picture.  Now let’s take a look at changing the size of the canvas - not the picture itself, but the workspace of this document.

Change the Canvas Size

To change the canvas size, you again go to image up here, then choose resize, and this time we click on canvas size. In these width and height boxes, you can put in the new values of the canvas, and you can also change inches to percent, centimeters, millimeters - whatever you prefer. 

Another option is to select relative, right here, and put in a positive amount to increase the size of the canvas, or a negative amount to decrease its size. This is handy if you want to modify the canvas by a specified number, for example - add 1 inch on all sides. 

At anchor, here, you can tell Elements where you want the image to be on the canvas. I’m just going to leave mine in the middle. And to change the color of the canvas, choose an option, or pick a color - I’ll pick this one- and click OK.  

And there you go, you’ve changed the size of the canvas!For more tips on using Adobe Photoshop Elements, check out compute.about.com. Thanks for watching!