How To Resize An Image On A Mac

If you are a new user of Mac, you probably still do not know many of the hidden tricks and features are hidden in the ins and outs of the macOS operating system. Simple things like reducing the size of a photograph can be a real headache if you don’t have the right applications or don’t know what tools can help you do it.

In this tutorial for macOS, we are going to show you how to change the size of a photo on your Mac in a series of very simple steps. The fastest way to change or reduce the size of an image is by changing its resolution, but we can also lower its quality by exporting it in another format.

In fact, you won’t even need a third-party app from the App Store to resize a photo. Although it is true that there are very interesting alternatives to do it. With that said, let’s start with the tutorial to resize or resize an image.

How to reduce the size of a photo by changing its resolution

As we previously anticipated, there are different methods to change the size of a photo or an image in macOS. But, without a doubt, the easiest way (and fastest by the way) is to use the Preview application on your Mac.

For anyone who is not yet familiar with this application, it is simply an application that is installed by default in macOS and that opens automatically when you open an image from your Mac.

Now, what should we do to change the resolution of an image in Preview?

• The first thing we will have to do is, of course, open the image in question to which we want to change the size and/or resolution. To do this we double-click on it. The Preview application is designed to open any macOS image by default. If not, right-click on the file, select “Open With” and choose “Preview”.
• Next, we are going to activate the function to change the resolution and dimensions of the photo. To reduce or increase the resolution of an image in Preview, the first thing you have to do is click on the editing tool that has an icon shaped like a pencil point.
• Now it is time to click on the button to adjust the size of an image. It is a button that has the shape of multiple boxes or rectangles, see the image.
• Finally, a pop-up window will open that shows us a series of options to adjust the size of the image. Here, what we will have to do is reduce the parameters of its size to reduce the resulting weight.
• Make sure the “Scale proportionally” box is checked so that the image is not deformed when you change its resolution. At the bottom, you can see how the weight of the image has been reduced.
• Once you’re done, press the blue “OK” button in the pop-up window or in the Touch Bar and you’re done. That easy!

Additionally, you can also choose to select “Tools> Resize” from the macOS taskbar to activate the functionality.

The Preview application will take care of saving the changes made to the image automatically. Although, as they point out from Howtogeek you can use the command “command + s” to manually update the photograph.

This is a very fast way to change the size of an image, but you can enter the App Store and download photo editing applications such as Photoshop, Skitch, Quickscale, Resize Master.

Change the quality of the photo to reduce its size

Well, we have already learned how to change the resolution of a photo by resizing its size. But, as we indicated, there are other alternatives. To reduce the size or weight of a photo, we also have the possibility to change the quality of the format.

And… yes, it is something that we can also do directly from the Preview application, without the need to download third-party applications from the App Store.

• Open the image you want to resize by double-clicking on it to open it in the macOS Preview app.
• What we must do next is, from the taskbar, access “File> Export”.
• In the pop-up window that will open automatically, we will only have to select the file format to which we want to export the image. Preferably JPEG format as it is the lowest quality format to reduce file size.
• At the bottom of the format selection, you will see a small scroll bar relative to the image quality. Here we recommend reducing the quality to the minimum to further reduce the size of your photo.
• Finally, click on “Save” in the window or in the Touch Bar of your MacBook, and done.

These are the two fastest ways to change and/or reduce the size of an image in macOS. Remember that the tutorial is perfectly compatible with any Apple Mac product, be it a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, an iMac, or a Mac mini, as long as they run the macOS operating system. We hope it has been helpful!