Photoshop Basics

Resizing images

There are many ways to scale and crop images in Photoshop- for more complete documentation, visit the Adobe Help Site. In this guide, we’ll show you how to do it by creating a new document at the desired size of your final product.

Step 1: determine desired size

You can refer to our common image sizes reference to figure out what size you should make your image.

Step 2: open your image in Photoshop

On your computer, right click on your image file and select “Open with”, then select “Adobe Photoshop CC”. Alternatively, you can launch Photoshop, and drag the file into the Photoshop workspace.

Step 3: create a new file Photoshop

Under the Photoshop “File” menu, select “New” – this will launch the popup window shown below.

ps-new-doc

  • Units: make sure that the height & width information (outlined in orange above) is in pixels. If it’s not, select pixels from the pulldown menu.
  • Dimensions: type in the correct pixel dimensions for your new image.
  • Resolution: for the web, the resolution should be set to 72 pixels/inch. This is the default, and should not need to be changed.
Step 4: copy your image into the new document

At this point, you should have 2 tabs open in Photoshop (one for your original image, one newly created blank document).

  • Switch to your original image.
  • Select the entire image (CTRL-A)
  • Copy it to your clipboard (CTRL-C)
  • Switch to the blank document
  • Paste your image in the blank document (CTRL-V)

For Mac users, use the Apple/command key instead of the CTRL key.

Step 4: scaling & positioning

If your original picture is SMALLER than the new document, you should stop and try to find a larger version. Enlarging an image makes it blurry, and is not recommended.

If your original picture is larger than the new document, you can shrink it down to a better size:

  • Select the transform tool (CTRL-T, or apple-T for mac users) – you should now see a bounding box around your image, that may go off the side of the screen.
  • Press and hold down the shift key – this will force the image to maintain its original aspect ratio as you transform it (i.e. it will not get distorted or stretched)
  • While still holding the shift key, left-click with your mouse, and drag your cursor down and to the right to shrink the image. If your image is particularly large, you may have to drag it up & to the left and shrink it down more than once.
  • At any point, you can click and drag the image to reposition it (release the shift key when you do this).
  • When your image is positioned & sized the way you like, double click on the image to commit your changes.
  • Save your image, as described below.

Save for web

save4web-menuFrom the Photoshop File menu, select “Save for Web,” as shown outlined in red to the left  This will launch a popup window. Find the file format pulldown menu in the upper right of the window, and select either JPEG or PNG-24 (see red arrows below).

  • JPEG is best for photographs
  • PNG-24 is best for graphics containing lots of text (like these screenshots)

save-as-png-or-jpg

Click on the “Save” button at the bottom of the window. This will launch another popup window: name your file (make sure you keep the .png or .jpg at the end) and select a place to save it on your computer.

You’re ready to upload the image to your WordPress site now.