how to stretch an image horizontally

[jlovda]

How can I stretch an image horizontally like a sheet of rubber. For whatever reason the image looks like it was squeezed and I want to make the people fatter without making them taller. I tried to use IMAGE>RESIZE but I cant remove the little aspect ratio lock. I don't know what all the "AI" stuff does.

[LeviFiction]

AI is for increasing the size of the image and having it recreate detail for you. When you increase the size of an image it has to create pixels out of nothing. Usually it was just different ways of mixing nearby colors resulting in muddy, soft, blurry areas. The AI stuff tries to do it better by being trained on millions of actual images. More importantly, the AI modes don't let you change the aspect ratio of the image.

What you want to do is choose one of the other modes like Smart Cubic and then turn off "Lock Aspect Ratio" this will let you resize one side leaving the other where it is.

Here's how you turn off Aspec Ratio
1) Open up The Resize command - set the width to what you want it to be.

2) If the Advanced Options checkbox is not yet checked, check it to open the advanced settings.

3) Next where it says AI Powered mode - click the drop-down and select "Smart Size" (AI gets auto selected when you select a size larger than the original image)

4) You'll see the option for "Lock Aspect Ratio" appear, uncheck this box

5) Go back up to the sizes and put the Height back down to the original size

6) Hit OK. Now the image should only resize the Width leaving the height alone.

[jlovda]

Thanks very much. Your instructions worked fine.

Maybe this is a wish for a future edition but I was hoping this tool would have worked similar to the cropping tool. When you put the cropping tool in the free form mode you can grab the center dot of a side and just pull or push it. The current situation forces you to take numerical guesses of the aspect ratio you want.

[LeviFiction]

The pick tool will let you more visually resize a layer, but it won't resize the entire image canvas on its own the way the Resize command does it'll just distort the image layer also the resize equation it uses is far more lossy than the methods in the Resize command. So to use the pick tool you have two main options.

1) You can simply resize the height until you get something that looks like you want in order to determine the aspect ratio that you want. Then undo the pick tool distoration, and perform the final official resize.

or

2) Image -> Canvas Size and expand the width of the canvas well beyond where you think you might end up. Then use the pick tool to expand the width of the image until it's where you want it. Once it's where you want it, you can crop it down pretty quickly.

[Jean-Luc]

I would like to add this to LeviFiction's suggestions: if several images have the same appearance, making a script to process them would save time.