I don’t recall if Picasa, the predecessor to Google Photos, had a way to shrink or enlarge photos, but Google Photos doesn’t have this feature.
By shrink or enlarge I don’t mean changing the file size, I mean actually changing the dimensions of the entire photo, as in its height and width. For example, changing an image size from 1,000X1,000 pixels to 100X100 pixels.
Searching online for how to do this in Google Photos is exhausting. Almost every link describes methods to reduce the storage size or to crop the image, which is not what I wanted.
It seems the only way to scale a photo is by using an image software either on a device or using a site.
But all I wanted was to shrink an image so I could cut and paste it into a message and the following steps were a quick way to accomplish that in Chrome. I suppose it’ll also work in any Chromium-based browser, like Edge.
- Right-click the photo, release mouse button, then press I.
- That brings up a new tab with just the photo in it. Go to that tab.
- Hold down Ctrl and use the mouse scroller or the – (minus) key to reduce the zoom level.
- When you reach the desired shrink level, copy the image using a capture application like the Snipping tool in Windows.
- Now you can paste the newly shrunk photo to wherever you want. You can return the tab’s zoom level back to default by pressing Ctrl-0.
This is not for precise scaling and the image’s aspect ratio remains locked, but it does the job well if you’re going just by sight and close enough is good enough. Of course this works for any image, not just the ones in Google Photos.
Give a few Sats