Resizing photos
level: easy

Want to resize several pictures of portrait and landscape orientation to the same dimensions simultaneously? Here's a handy trick to help.

Here’s the sample photo whose sharp forms need to be softened to give the picture a new feel.

First, we duplicate the background layer. Drag the layer upon the Create a new layer icon on the Layers palette, or click Layer/Duplicate Layer in the menu. The upper layer will be selected. Keep it that way.

Click Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur and use a relatively high Radius value on the appearing dialog to make the image heavily blurred. The value should be at least 10. You can use lower values when dealing with small pictures, but with large ones, you can even set it higher. The point is to blur the photo into hardly recognizable blots. As this is a rather small picture, a value of 10 will be appropriate.

Return to the Layers palette and set Opacity to 50%. This is where you can decide how strong an effect you would like. A value below 50% produces a slighter blur, while a higher one leads to more radical softening.

Basically, we are done. Click Layer/Flatten Image to merge the layers. As the blurring messes up contrast, you would also do well to click Image/Adjustments/Auto Contrast on the final image.

Here’s the result: