How to Resize Photos in Microsoft Paint

This is an article that shows you how to zoom in, out, or crop an image in Microsoft Paint. The first two operations preserve the aspect ratio, and the other deletes the outer part of the image.

Table of Contents

Zoom in or out the photo

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Make a copy of the photo you want to resize. Open the folder where the images to be processed, right-click the image and select Copy in the menu that appears, then right-click an empty space in the folder or on the main computer screen and select Paste . .

Failure to make a copy will result in the original image being edited.

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Right click on the copy of the photo. A menu will appear after this operation.

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Select Open with . This is the option in the middle of the displayed menu. You will see another menu displayed here.

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Click Paint . This option is available in the menu just displayed. The image you select will open in the Paint program.

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Click Resize . This is the selection in the middle of the right section of the “Image” section at the top of the Paint window.

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Make sure a black dot shows up next to “Percentage”. Otherwise, you’ll click the circle next to “Percentage” to make sure your photo changes are in percentages.

Your image will have an initial vertical and horizontal value of 100, so changing these values to “75” will reduce the image size to ¾ of the original image.
If you’d like to adjust the photo to the correct horizontal or vertical resolution, you can click the circle next to “Pixels”.

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Check the “Maintain aspect ratio” box. If you don’t see a check mark in the box next to “Maintain aspect ratio”, click it; otherwise, any changes to one element of the image (such as the vertical size) will not cause the rest of the elements to change accordingly.

If this box is already checked, you will go to the next step.

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Change the size of the image. Enter a number from 1 to 500 in the “Horizontal” box. Any number below 100 will shrink the image but keep the image size, and numbers above 100 will enlarge the image but not change the image size.

If you want to resize the image by resolution, enter the number of vertical resolutions you want to use in the “Vertical” box. You can also uncheck the “Maintain aspect ratio” box and enter a different value in the “Horizontal” box if needed.

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Click OK . This is to apply changes to the image.

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Save Image. Press Ctrl + S to do this. Thus, the changes of the image will be saved.

Crop photo

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Learn how to crop images. Cropping the image will leave a smaller portion of the image, but the quality of the crop will remain the same. This is the right operation to use when you want to cut out unnecessary parts of an image without changing the original resolution.

Cropped images will also have a smaller file size.

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Make a copy of the photo you want to resize. Open the folder where the images to be processed, right-click the image and select Copy in the menu that appears, then right-click an empty space in the folder or on the main computer screen and select Paste . .

Failure to make a copy will result in the original image being edited.

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Right click on the copy of the photo. You will see a menu will show up here.

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Select Open with . This is the option in the middle of the displayed menu. Another menu will appear here.

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Click Paint . This option is available in the currently displayed menu. The selected image will be opened in the Paint program.

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Click ▼ under Select . The Select option is available in the “Image” section of the Home tab displayed at the top of the “Paint” window. You will see a menu appear on the screen.

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Click Rectangular selection . This is the first option in the menu that is showing here.

If you want to select the area to your liking, click Free-form selection .

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Click and drag the mouse over the image. You should see a rectangle with dotted lines appear on the image; The part of the image inside the dotted line will be preserved when you choose to crop the image.

If you want to remove the border of the image, the most effective way is to click on the upper left corner and drag the mouse diagonally to the lower right corner (or something like that).
To remove the dotted lines and select them again, you would click anywhere outside the section bounded by those lines.

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Click Crop . This is the selection above the “Image” section and to the right of the Select option. When you click this button, everything outside the selected area is deleted, and you only see the part of the image inside that area.

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Save Image. You just need to press the key combination Ctrl + S . This will save a copy of the image as a cropped file, instead of the original image.

Advice

When printing a resized photo, you need to make sure the printer doesn’t automatically resize the image before printing.
Reducing the size of an image, even a little, will reduce the size of the image file.

Warning

Consider downsizing the copied image instead of the original. To make a copy of the original file: you’ll right-click the image, select Copy , then right-click your computer’s home screen and select Paste . You can right-click the copied photo and choose to open it in Paint.
Enlarging will reduce the quality of the image.

Steps

Zoom in or out the photo

Crop photo

Advice

Warning

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