Resize

[mgriffen]

Hello, I am in charge of populating my companies website with images and I am having serious difficulty dealing with image sizes etc..

I have a Soliloquy slider at the top of the home page but its image resolution restriction is really hard to work with. It wants images at 1440 x 466.

How do I get high-quality images to this size? If I take a picture with my cell phone and then try to crop down to that resolution I basically lose everything I'm trying to take a picture of. Or if I try to resize the photo to the necessary resolution it gets completely distorted and stretched.

Any help is much appreciated.

[Norman Sanders · Accepted solution]

Confirm that the image must be approximately a 3:1 aspect ratio for your photographs.

An iPhone aspect ratio is 4:3

As shown in the illustration above, to compose useful iPhone images in that restricted blue area is a challenge, to say the least. The photograph must be taken with the extreme limitation in mind. After-the-fact cropping is a desperate option.

[davescm]

As Norman has very well demonstrated, when changing the aspect ration (ratio of width to height) then you have two choices

1. Squash and stretch - in other words distort the image

2. Crop the image i.e. throw some of it away so that what is left fits the new aspect ratio.

There is a Content aware scale option which does stretch the image but gives some control over where the stretching happens. There is also content aware fill which can fill in gaps. However the success of both these options is very much image dependent.

The real answer is to shoot with the final aspect ratio in mind

Dave

[mgriffen]

If you were tasked to provide images in such a resolution, how would you go about it? I do have access to a nice DSLR camera but would that help me?

Thanks,

Matt.

[davescm]

The DSLR will have an aspect ratio of 3:2 or very close to that.

So you will need to frame with a view to cropping the top and bottom into your 3:1 ratio. A bit of masking tape on the rear screen may help you visualise the working area.  Use the middle section rather than the top or bottom, lenses tend to have less distortion away from the corners.

Once in Photoshop you can crop and resize your image to 1440 x 446

Dave

[mgriffen]

If I have the grid overlay turned on, it seems to section the screen in thirds vertically and horizontally. Would I be safe in making sure that my subject is in the "middle third" of the grid overlay after setting the aspect ratio to the 3:2 setting or whatever the closest option I have is.

Thanks,

Matt.

[davescm]

Using the middle third allows you some margin for error so keeping the subject in there would be safe (just make sure there is nothing untoward just outside (although you can of course adjust your crop position when you size down)

Dave

[mgriffen]

Thank you VERY much for your help!

Matt.

[davescm]

You're welcome

Dave

[postrophix]

Hi

Soliloquy slider : Have you check its settings, you can adjust its size to conform to your images ratio.

Also, if the slider is inside a parent HTML container, make sure that container is conform to the slider size.

Make sure to read Soliloquy documentations and forum.

Pierre