Today’s Question: As a follow up to the question about cropping versus stretching a photo for printing at a specific size, would Generative Fill provide a solution for resizing without cropping?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you could use Generative Fill (or even better, Generative Expand) to expand an image to fit a particular aspect ratio, so you wouldn’t need to crop or skew the image.
More Detail: As I explained in yesterday’s answer, if you want to print an image at a specific aspect ratio, you could crop the image to the applicable aspect ratio or transform the image to stretch it to match the intended aspect ratio. Another option I didn’t mention specifically would be to use Generative AI to expand the image to match the intended aspect ratio.
In effect, this is a variation on transforming the image to fit the preferred aspect ratio, though it involves adding additional pixels using AI rather than stretching the image to fit. This isn’t something that is available in Lightroom Classic (at least not yet), but it is available in both Camera Raw and Photoshop.
For example, you could open the image in Photoshop and set the Crop tool to an aspect ratio of 8×10 (the example output size in yesterday’s question), then instead of cropping the 8×12 image inward to remove pixels, you could expand the crop box outside the image area. On the Options bar you can then choose “Generative Expand” from the Fill popup. When you apply the crop, including applying the Generative AI prompt, the image will be expanded with additional pixels added so that the aspect ratio matches your intended print size.
Keep in mind that the results of using Generative Expand will vary depending on the content of the image. For example, expanding the image in an area of sky will generally produce very good results. Expanding an area that contains more complex details such as animals or people could yield results that are less than ideal. Still, Generative Expand is another solution for sizing an image to a different aspect ratio without cropping out any portion of the image.
