Many of us need to optimize photos for various social media by creating specific image and dimension sizes. Their specifications can be very specific pixel sizes: 180×180, 1080×1920, 1200×675 and so forth. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Spotify, Snapchat, Twitter and others recommend many different dimensions.

If you already have Photoshop, here’s one easy way to do it.

Above is a photo that I wish to resize. In my example, I will resize it for the header in Photofocus. But it could be for anything.

1. Select the Crop tool

2. Select desired dimensions

In the Crop tool dialog box as shown above, select W x H x Resolution. Type in the desired amount. If you want pixels, simply type in “px” after the number amount of reach. Click in the center of the photo to produce the sectioned view. Adjust as you see fit.

Photoshop will remember the dimensions for next time. This is great if you need to create numerous photos of the same size at once.

3. Crop

After you have adjusted the image to your satisfaction, you’ll need to crop it. You can do this in at least two ways:

  1. Select Image > Crop from the pulldown menu at the top.
  2. Select another tool from the toolbar. Above, I have selected the Rectangular Marquee tool. However, it can be any other tool from the toolbar.

From here, simply save the image. If you wish to save it as a separate image, select File > Save As and follow the prompts.

That’s it!

Featured night photo

The grille and other remains of a vehicle at a decommissioned World War II airfield in Central California. I illuminated this grille with a handheld ProtoMachines LED2 light painting device during the exposure at night. I also enhanced the strangeness of this grille by accentuating it with a fisheye lens, getting very close and angling the lens down so more of the fisheye distortion would show.