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Pixelsmith

Free browser tool

Resize an image to exactly the size you need

This resizer changes the pixel dimensions of a photo or graphic: you give it a width, a height or a percentage, and it redraws the image at that size and hands the file back to you. It is the right tool when an upload form rejects your photo, when a page is slow because its images are far bigger than the space they occupy, or when a platform asks for a specific canvas.

It is aimed at people who need a correct result quickly — writers preparing article images, shop owners standardising product photos, support teams trimming screenshots, and developers checking how an asset behaves at a given size. No account, no queue, no watermark.

Everything runs inside your browser. The file is decoded with the standard File and Canvas APIs on your own machine, redrawn at the target size, and re-encoded locally. Nothing is transmitted, which is why the result appears the moment you stop typing.

Two limits are worth stating plainly: downscaling permanently discards pixels, and enlarging cannot invent detail that the camera never recorded. Animated GIFs are flattened to their first frame, because the canvas holds a single still image.

Accepts
JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF (first frame), BMP
Exports
JPEG · PNG · WebP
Max input
40 MB
Uploads
None

Resize · canvas engine

Drop an image here

JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF or BMP up to 40 MB. Nothing leaves your device.

or paste with Ctrl / ⌘ + V

Step by step

How to use this tool

  1. 01

    Load your image

    Drag a file onto the panel, click Choose a file, or paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard.

  2. 02

    Set the dimensions

    Type a width or height, use a percentage, or pick one of the common widths. The chain button decides whether the ratio stays locked.

  3. 03

    Choose the output

    Keep the original format or switch to JPEG, PNG or WebP. For lossy formats, the quality slider controls the encoder.

  4. 04

    Check and download

    The preview and the estimated file size update as you type. When the numbers look right, download the result.

Practical guide

A practical guide to resizing without wrecking your image

Resizing looks like a single number, but the result depends on how you get there. These are the parts that actually change what your visitors see.

Downscaling is a filtering problem

When an image shrinks, several source pixels have to collapse into one. If a resizer simply samples every Nth pixel, thin lines and repeating textures — brick, fabric, text — turn into flicker and moiré patterns. A good resizer averages the pixels it is throwing away.

This tool halves the image repeatedly until it is close to the target and only then does the final step. The intermediate averages act as a low-pass filter, which is why a 4000 px photo reduced to 400 px here keeps its texture instead of turning crunchy.

Enlarging has a hard ceiling

Upscaling stretches the pixels you already have and guesses what belongs in between. That guess is an average of neighbours, so edges soften and fine detail never returns. Going beyond about 150% of the original width is usually visible.

If you need a larger image, the right fix is upstream: re-export from the original file, re-shoot at a higher resolution, or use a vector source such as SVG for logos and diagrams, which scales without any loss at all.

Aspect ratio, cropping and distortion

With the chain locked, changing one dimension updates the other and the image keeps its proportions. Unlock it and you can force any pair of numbers — but a photo squeezed into the wrong ratio looks obviously wrong, and faces are the first thing people notice.

When a layout demands a ratio your photo does not have, crop first and resize second. Cropping chooses which part of the frame survives; resizing then sets the final pixel count.

Pick dimensions from the layout, not from habit

The useful question is not "what is a good size" but "how wide is this image ever rendered". Measure the container in your design or with the browser's element inspector, double it for high-density screens, and resize to that.

A few starting points that cover most of the web:

  • Full-width hero banner — 1920 px wide
  • Article or content-column image — 1200 px wide
  • In-article figure or screenshot — 800 px wide
  • Card, avatar or list thumbnail — 400 px wide
  • Email body image — 600 px wide, because most clients cap the layout there

Before you export

Important considerations

Honest limits matter more than a longer feature list. These are the trade-offs worth knowing before you download the result.

Resizing is destructive

The pixels removed on the way down are gone from the exported file. Keep your original somewhere safe and treat the resized copy as an output, not as your master.

Re-encoding costs a little quality

Exporting to JPEG or WebP runs the image through a lossy encoder again. One pass at 85–95% is visually clean; repeatedly resizing an already-resized JPEG is what produces smeary, blocky results.

Metadata is not preserved

Canvas output contains pixels only, so EXIF, ICC profiles and XMP tags are dropped. That is good for privacy and bad if you rely on embedded copyright or colour-profile information.

Animated GIFs lose their animation

Only the first frame is decoded and exported. If you need to resize an animation, use a dedicated GIF or video tool.

Very large files can stall a tab

A 40 MP image needs roughly 160 MB of memory once decoded. The 40 MB input limit exists so the tool fails with a clear message instead of freezing your browser.

Browsers differ slightly

Each browser ships its own JPEG and WebP encoder, so the exact byte count can vary between Chrome, Firefox and Safari even at the same quality setting. Visual quality is comparable.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Does resizing reduce the quality of my photo?

Making an image smaller discards pixels, and that is permanent — but done well it is essentially invisible, because the remaining pixels are averaged from the ones removed. This tool downscales in halving steps rather than in one jump, which keeps fine texture that a single-pass resize would turn into shimmering noise. Enlarging is the opposite: no tool can recover detail that was never captured, so an upscaled image looks soft.

Why is my resized file sometimes larger than the original?

Because the output is re-encoded. If you feed in a heavily compressed JPEG and export at 100% quality, or convert a photo to PNG, the encoder can easily produce more bytes than it started with. Watch the Change figure under the preview: if it is positive, lower the quality slider or pick a more suitable format.

What size should my images be for a website?

Match the widest box the image will ever occupy, then serve that at 1× and 2×. In practice: 1920 px for a full-bleed hero, 1200 px for a content-width image, 800 px for an in-article figure and 400 px for a card thumbnail. Anything wider is bytes your visitors download and then throw away.

Can I resize several images at once?

Not yet — this tool handles one image at a time so the preview stays instant and memory use stays low. For a repeatable batch you are better served by a command-line tool such as ImageMagick or a build-step image pipeline.

Does the tool keep my EXIF data?

No. Resizing re-encodes the image through an HTML canvas, and the canvas only holds pixels, so camera, date and GPS tags are dropped. If you want to strip metadata without touching the pixels, use the Remove EXIF Data tool instead.

Is there a file size limit?

40 MB. The whole image has to be decoded into your tab's memory, and very large files can make a browser tab unresponsive on modest hardware. Most camera JPEGs are far below this limit.

Privacy & security note

Your image is read with the browser's File API, decoded into an HTML canvas and re-encoded — all on your own device. There is no upload step, no temporary server copy and no processing queue, which you can verify by opening your browser's network tab while you use the tool: no request carries your file.

Because nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored or retained by us. Closing or refreshing the tab discards the image from memory. The downloaded result is written straight to your own downloads folder.

Read the full privacy policy