How to resize an image in GIMP on Windows 10

Photoshop has long since moved to a subscription format. You can no longer pay for a lifetime license and use the app forever turning the app into an on-going expense. This, of course, makes it less affordable for some, and more affordable for others. For those that find a Photoshop subscription to be too expensive, there aren’t that many alternatives, except for GIMP. GIMP has almost every feature that Photoshop has but the software works differently and you have to unlearn your old Photoshop habits. Here’s how you resize an image in GIMP which is one of the glaring differences between this app and Photoshop.

Resizing an image

In Photoshop, when we talk about resizing an image, we generally mean the item that’s in the current layer. In GIMP, resizing an image, and resizing an object in a layer are two different things.

Open GIMP, add a new layer, and paste an image or draw an object on the layer.

We’re now going to look at two different methods for resizing the image; a fixed width/height resize method and a freehand resizing method.

With the item pasted to a layer, go to Layer>Scale layer.

In the little window that opens, choose the width or height of the image. It’s best to scale the image proportionately. Once you’ve entered the values, click the Scale button.

To resize an image with a freehand i.e., drag the corners of an image to resize it instead of entering a value for the new size, select the layer and tap the Shift+S keyboard shortcut. you will get the same window as before but this time, you will see corners visible on the object for dragging. Click and drag them to resize the image.

Photoshop users can dive right into using GIMP for the most part. There aren’t any new tools to learn but you’ll find that plenty of the keyboard shortcuts that you learned to comfortably use Photoshop do nothing or something entirely different in GIMP. In some cases, such as when you’re resizing an image or pasting it, you will find that again, there is a difference in how the GIMP app prioritizes default functions. You cannot e.g., use the ever-popular Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut to just paste an image into the current layer which is something that most image editors, Photoshop or not, tend to support.

These are of course the more obvious differences that you will note right away but as you use the app more, you’ll find new things to learn and unlearn.

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