Resize Images to Fit

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Today’s Question: Is there a way in Photoshop to resize a group of images in batch so that they are all the same size on the long side, without horizontal versus vertical images having different dimensions on the long side?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can use the “Resize to Fit” setting with the Image Processor command, which you can access either from within Photoshop or from Adobe Bridge.

More Detail: If you use the Image Size command (Image > Image Size) you will need to specify both a height and width setting, meaning you’ll need to be sure to use the intended pixel dimension in the Width field for a horizontal image or the Height field for a vertical image. With the “Resize to Fit” option of the Image Processor command you can specify outer dimensions for batch resizing, so that for example all images will have the same number of pixels on the long side, regardless of whether an image is horizontal or vertical.

You can batch process images with Image Processor from directly within Photoshop, such as by opening the images you want to process, selecting File > Scripts > Image Processor from the menu, and choosing the “Use Open Images” option in section one. However, I think it is easier to get started from Adobe Bridge.

To use Image Processor from Adobe Bridge, select the photos you want to process, and then from the menu choose Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor. That will open the Image Processor in Photoshop, with the images that had been selected in Adobe Bridge automatically selected as the images to process.

You can then select the options for saving the images, such as to save as JPEG images if you’ll be sharing online. For any of the available file formats you can turn on the “Resize to Fit” checkbox and then enter the outer dimensions in the W (width) and H (height) fields. For example, if you want the images to be sized to 2,000 pixels on the long side you can enter 2000 in both fields.

Once you’ve configured the settings in the Image Processor dialog click the Run button. The images will then be processed based on the settings you’ve selected, including having been resized to fit the dimensions you specified.