How to Resize an Image on a Windows 10 PC & Laptop

You may need to post a smaller version of a picture to Facebook or another social network like Instagram and others. You may want to use a picture that isn’t so ridiculously oversized in an email. Or maybe you just want the perfect size picture to be used in a blog post or Word document. Whatever your reason, it’s not hard to change the size of the photo. Meanwhile, in this guide, you are going to learn how to resize an image on Windows 10 PC or laptop without using an online image resize or app.

Fortunately, with almost any photo application around, the power to resize photos is included. This includes two of the most common ones that have been built on any Windows 10 PC from the start: Photos, and Microsoft Paint. 

Remember, however, that there’s a contrast between resizing an image to be smaller, and resizing it to be larger. Nearly any application will scale down a picture without difficulty, even images, and paint. However, you can find that the picture loses a lot of clarity if you use these programs to render an image larger.

Method 1. Resize an Image using Paint

Since version 1.0 in 1985, Paint has become a standard of Windows. Chances are you’ve previously seen it. Paint opens the most common file types (BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF, and GIF) and provides a very quick image resizing solution. Here’s how to resize an image on Windows 10 using Paint:

Step 1. Open Microsoft Paint program. Which you can usually find in the Start menu

Step 2. Open the photo you want to resize by clicking File, then Open, and select the image from your computer’s files.

Step 3. On the Home tab of the Paint toolbar, click the Resize button.

Resize

Step 4.  Enter the size you want to resize the image to. Paint gives you the option of resizing by percentage or by pixels. It uses percentage by default, and that’s fine for rough resizing. If you need something specific, you’ll need to switch over to using pixels. When done, click OK.

Step 5. Save the new version of your image by clicking File and then Save As.

Paint is a pretty good resizing tool if you only need to resize one picture at a time and don’t want to add any third-party software.

Method 2. Resize an Image on Windows using the Photos app

In the Photos app, there’s a “Resize” option hidden in the side menu, which you can use to change the size and quality of an image. Here’s how to resize an image on Windows 10 PC or laptop using the Photos app:

Step 1. Double-click the image file you want to resize to open it in Photos.

Step 2. Once it’s opened, click the three dots in the top-right corner, then click Resize.

Step 3. A small pop-up will appear, offering you three preset sizes for the picture. Pick one of them, or click Define custom dimensions at the bottom.

Define custom dimensions

Step 4. If “Maintain aspect ratio” is ticked, then you only need to change either the height or width and the other dimension will change automatically to match it. When done, click Saved resized copy.

Saved resized copy

That’s it. This is how you can resize an image on Windows 10 PC and laptop without using any third-party apps. It is also worth noting that, based on the original size of the image, the resizing options can differ. For eg, if you have a picture that is already big, it will grey out any of the resizing options. And if you have a picture that is too small, the option to resize is not even open. 

The resizing choices in the Images app are currently simple and it does not have a whole lot of variety. For a job or school assignment, whether you need to scale photos to a certain size, it’s typically better to go for a more efficient third-party app such as SnagIt or Paint.net. But the Images app gets the work done for fast and basic resizing.

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