[rpierce]

Yeah, the proportion was not initially correct for the final size she wanted. In situations like this I just use the crop tool. Set it for the final settings you want then use the tool.

[Texas Fossil]

I just sized it for the largest dimension and let the width be slightly undersized. I did convert it to GIMP’s .xcf file format (scalable) and then exported it into .jpg and .png formats. She e-mailed me the original file and then sent one that was scaled. So I did it twice. Doubt there was any appreciable difference in output quality.

[Texas Fossil]

Did you ever use ImageMagic? It is a very powerful command line image processing program. I used it daily for 5-1/2 years.

On one occassion, I resized 40,000 images and thumbnails in one evening with it. Started it some time after 5:30 PM and when I came back to the office about 4:30-5:00 AM it was finished. It took original image sizes and shapes which varied and converted the size and dpi to a standard format for the web.

I maintained color and black and white images for print and different formatted version for the web.

It was absolutely amazing how efficient that was. And it was open source. My niece’s husband works for the Navy, was surprised to find that they use it too.

[PUGACHEV]

If you are close, but not quite at the proportion you want, go to Select>Select All, then Edit>Transform>Scale and tug the image into the shape you want. If the ratio you are trying to achieve is far from that of the original image, the distortion will be too noticeable. In those cases, you want to use "Content Aware Scaling" or "Seam Carving" to keep you subject from being misshapen.

If you do quite a bit of enlarging and reducing, I find Ben Vista Photo Zoom Pro and Alien Skin plug-ins to be far, far better than any of PS's "Image Size" options.