I'm trying to resize a Start button but cannot

[357mag]

I've got two Windows Start buttons that I'm trying to resize. They are currently 71 x 114. They need to be 129 x 117.

Problem is whenever I enter 129 Paint Shop Pro automatically fills in the wrong number in the bottom box. It will not let me enter 117 in the bottom box. I've tried messing with Bicubic and all those other things in there to no avail.

Not sure what I have to do so I can get this button 129 x 117.

[357mag]

Okay I got it. You have to uncheck the box about Maintain Aspect Ratio. But now the text on the button is blurry.

[Jean-Luc]

But now the text on the button is blurry.

Try the 4 choices and see if one is better :

Resize 4 choices.png (7.73 KiB) Viewed 1370 times

"Smart size" is an automatic feature making the choice for you (one of the four but you don't know which has been applied).

[JoeB]

When you upsize an image then PSP must add pixels to the image that don't already exist to make the image bigger. It has to "guess" at what the pixels it is adding should look like, and then try to blend those pixels into the existing pixels of the image to try to make the resized image transitions look smooth. This will cause some blurriness. You can alleviate that to some extent by using both the sharpening and perhaps Clarity filters in PSP to improve the look, but it still might not look as good as you would like.

And, as you have likely found out, because you are using a different aspect ratio than the original then the text will have been stretched in one direction so will be a different aspect ratio from the original.

Why don't you just make a button of the same color at the size that you want and then add the text to it?

[ehume]

When you upsize an image then PSP must add pixels to the image that don't already exist to make the image bigger. It has to "guess" at what the pixels it is adding should look like, and then try to blend those pixels into the existing pixels of the image to try to make the resized image transitions look smooth. This will cause some blurriness. You can alleviate that to some extent by using both the sharpening and perhaps Clarity filters in PSP to improve the look, but it still might not look as good as you would like.

And, as you have likely found out, because you are using a different aspect ratio than the original then the text will have been stretched in one direction so will be a different aspect ratio from the original.

Why don't you just make a button of the same color at the size that you want and then add the text to it?

The above is correct, of course.

But you may wish to do this in stages. First stage, with the Resize function, increase your vertical dimension from 114px to 117px. This will make the original button a little wider, too. Then invoke the Resize Canvas function (in the window it says only Canvas). Pad out your button to 129px. You might have to use the Selection function, selecting the edges of the original button and moving them to the periphery, filling in the gaps.

Back when I was doing Firefox themes, this is what I did. Of course, enlarging anything produces blurring. In your case, I would not resize the image but resize the canvas. If I had to I would expand the edges.