How to resize a digital photograph using Affinity Photo software

This is the Affinity Photo window I saw after starting up the program.

In the Affinity Photo menu across the top of the screen select the File menu and Open command.

This window will appear allowing you to search the folders and files of your computer account to find the photograph that you want to resize.

Here is the photograph that I want to resize. There is a tarp covering a pile of leaves. There is a fox sleeping on top of the tarp. Now you know why I seldom take any wildlife photographs. This fox has been eating or scaring away any animal that moves slow enough for me to take its picture.

The left arrow indicates where the size of the photograph as measured in pixels is listed. The right arrow shows the photograph is currently being zoomed down to be displayed at 15.3% of its size.

I randomly played around in the menus until I managed to brighten up the colours in this photograph. Now it is time to work on resizing the photograph. In the Affinity Photo menu across the top of your screen select the Document menu. We appear to have a choice of two commands: Resize Document and Resize Canvas.

This is the window I saw after choosing Resize Canvas. Do you see that square of nine dots in a 3 x 3 grid. That is the hint that this command is used for precise cropping of an image which is not what we want to do. I mouse clicked on the Cancel button.

Here is the window I saw after choosing Resize Document in the Document menu. There is a closed padlock beween the width and height dimensions beside the word Size. If I change one of the numbers the other number should automatically change to maintain the aspect ratio between width and height. This is the hint that we are in the right place to resize our photograph smaller while maintaining its width to height proportions.

Here I have mouse clicked on the padlock and it is now open. If I change either of the numbers in the boxes beside the word Size the shape of the photograph will change. I do not want to do that!

I have closed the padlock by mouse clicking on it. I have changed the width of the photograph to 1024 pixels. The computer has automatically calculated the height of the photograph to maintain its shape.

Here is my resized photograph. The only difference that you are likely to notice is that the pixel dimensions changed and the display zoom size changed as shown by the arrows.

Now it is time to save my resized photograph using a different filename. In the Affinity Photo menu across the top of the screen the File menu has the commands Save As and Export.

Here is the Export window. The available file types are represented by little icons across the top of the window. Currently the JPEG file type is highlighted. The Preset box has a few options. When I choose JPEG (Best quality) the slider on the Quality line moves to the end at number 100. The Estimated File Size is 917.08 kB.

I have changed the Preset to JPEG (High quality). The Quality slider is now at 85. The Estimate File Type is 211.06 kB.

Here is what the Export window looks like when I change the file type to TIFF.

When you mouse click on the Export button in the Export window you are taken to this Save As window. If I had chosen Save As back in the File menu I would have been taken directly here bypassing the Export window. I have chaned the filename by adding the number 1024 before mouse clicking the Save button.

Here is a screenshot of the folders and files of my user account on my computer. You can see the pixel dimensions of my original photograph file and the pixel dimensions of my resized photograph file after using the Affinity Photo application.

All through the lesson my photograph was surrounded by menus taking up lots of space on the screen. But thinking back on what we just did the only menu items I used were found in the Affinity Photo menu with File Edit View Help and other items across the top of the screen. Therefore since I am just a beginner at learning how to use Affinity Photo I started searching around to see if there was a way to get rid of all of those items taking up space on the screen. I would like to have more screen space for my photograph.

In the View menu at the top of the screen I found the command Toggle UI. Toggle means to turn something off and on like a light switch. UI apparently means User Interface. Sequential mouse clicks of Toggle UI makes all of the menus surround the photograph disappear and reappear.

Here is what the screen looks like after using Toggle UI to remove all the menus surrounding my photograph. The photograph is now larger on the screen.

Be aware that after using Toggle UI to remove the user interface this is what the screen will look like the next time you startup the program.