08 May 09 Resizing images for website design.

One of the most common problems of early php automation was the inability of the application to re-size images properly. Now fortunately, most apps automatically do what we are going to discuss today.
Say for example you have an image that is not perfectly square.

By inserting this image into a place holder that only allows for square images, you would get this result:

To avoid this we use a simple procedure with the GIMP. Open the file, right click on the image and go down to image on the menu. Then select “canvas size” from the sub menu. You should see this dialogue.

Click the chain link between width and height to break it.

Next, match the smallest number to the largest. In this example the largest number is 594, so we should make the width 594. It is very important that you use the larger of both numbers to match. After you have both numbers matching, hit the “center” button in this dialogue.

Now click resize and you are left with a perfectly square image. Last step – right click on the picture, go to image, the click on “flatten image” in the sub-menu dialouge. Viola! Here is your end result.

This teqnique is useful for any instance where you will have an image automatically resized to a square dimension and dont want the picture distorted in the process.