Today’s Question: I want to send a couple of photos to be printed in a 8×10 size. When I resize in Lightroom Classic, it wants to crop the photo to fit. I don’t want any of the photo cropped out. Is there a way to size it in Lightroom Classic to be a certain size without cropping?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Lightroom Classic doesn’t really provide an easy way to resize an image without cropping. You can perform this task in Photoshop, but keep in mind that doing so will skew the image, potentially to the point of the photo looking rather distorted.
More Detail: Most digital cameras have an aspect ratio that corresponds to an image with dimensions of 8×12 rather than 8×10, though there is some variability in this. That means that in order to produce an 8×10 print you would need to crop two inches off the long side.
If you don’t want to crop the image, there are really only two choices. You could transform the image, altering the relationship between height and width to make it fit within an 8×10 frame. However, this can create considerable distortion, causing the subjects in the photo look taller and narrower than they actually are.
The other option would be to resize the image to fit within the printed area, but then leave empty space at the top and bottom of the print. For example, you could resize the image to be 6.667 inches tall and 10 inches wide, printing that on an 8×10 sheet of paper with two-thirds of an inch of blank space at the top and bottom of the print.
If you wanted to resize the image to fit specific dimensions, you can use the Image > Image Size command in Photoshop. Set the output resolution as desired (such as 300 pixels per inch), unlock the lock between the Width and Height (with the button showing a chain link icon to the left of these fields) and set the values for Width and Height to the output dimensions (taking into account whether it is a horizontal or vertical image of course). Click OK to apply the change.
You can get a sense of the distortion effect in Lightroom Classic by first setting the crop aspect ratio to the intended output size (such as 8×10 in this case) and then increasing the slider value for Aspect in the Transform section. Even at a maximum value of +100, however, the obvious distortion in the image won’t be enough to shift the image from 8×12 to 8×10, which is why Photoshop would generally be needed for this type of change.
But again, you will most likely find that the distortion is significant enough to be problematic, so you’ll likely want to either crop the image or print with empty space on the page.
