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Viewers can miss the main subject if the composition is wrong and the subject is near the side of the frame. Instead of cropping and making the photo smaller, learning how to stretch an image in Photoshop can help you stretch the background and achieve the right composition.
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In most cases, there are requirements on the image size you can upload to real estate websites. Photoshop is a versatile application that allows you to stretch the images to meet these requirements with minimal or unnoticeable loss in quality.
Launch Photoshop, navigate to File, choose Open, select the image you want to stretch from the browser window, and click Open. This will open the image as the background layer in the Photoshop workspace. Usually, editing this layer means changing the original image pixels.
To make your edits nondestructive such that you can revert to the original image if something goes wrong, duplicate the background layer by navigating to Layer and then choosing Duplicate Layer. Select the duplicate layer and use the following methods to stretch the image.
Generally, scaling the image up or down resizes all the image pixels uniformly, affecting even the main subject of your image. The content-aware scale is one of the best tools to stretch your real estate images and improve composition.
You can use this tool to stretch the image to fit the aspect ratio or form factor required by multiple listing services (MLS) while preserving the pixels of the subject in the image. For instance, if your main subject in an interior photo is the cabinet, you can stretch the kitchen walls without affecting the cabinet pixels.
However, this tool doesn’t support Smart Objects, and you will need to rasterize your image layer if it’s a Smart Object. Simply right-click the layer on the layers panel, choose Rasterize Layer, and then use the following steps to stretch the image using the content-aware scale.
The Photoshop Transform tool allows you to alter a selection or an object differently, such as flipping it like a mirror, distorting, rotating, or scaling it up and down. However, stretching the image and making it larger than the canvas causes image cropping.
That means you will need to resize the canvas and make it larger than the intended image size. You can then use the distort settings of the transform tool to stretch the image in your preferred direction using the following steps:
The image size command is one of Photoshop's most straightforward ways to stretch images, making it ideal for beginners. Unlike when using the transform tool, where you need to first increase the canvas size to prevent the image from being cropped, this command automatically increases the canvas size as you increase the image size.
Simply select the image layer from the layers panel, navigate to Image on the top menu bar and choose Image Size. Click on the chain-like icon on the left to prevent Photoshop from adjusting the height to match the width values and vice versa.
Type the percentage of increase you would like in the width and height text fields. Note that the values should be greater than 100. Otherwise, you will be warping the photo inwards. For instance, setting the width to 200 will make the image's width 100% larger than the height. Click OK to confirm.
The Photoshop content-aware fill feature uses artificial intelligence to automatically fill a region with pixels sourced from the other parts of the image. Like the content-aware scale, you can use this feature to stretch the image without distorting it.
Typically, the content-aware fill works by generating pixels for the extended part instead of stretching the actual image pixels, reducing the chances of the image looking pixelated. Depending on the image background, you can use the following steps to stretch a photo using the content-aware fill.
Stretching an image can make it low-quality, depending on the method used. Since stretching increases the dimensions of the individual pixels, larger pixels might be noticeable, and the photo might look pixelated and low-quality. However, methods such as the content-aware fill don’t affect the pixel sizes, and the image will retain its quality.
You can increase the image size without stretching using the Image Size command. By default, when you enter a new height or width, Photoshop proportionately adjusts the width or the height to retain the image’s landscape or portrait orientation. That means increasing the width or the height will make the photo larger without stretching any side.
Learning how to stretch an image in Photoshop helps you choose the right stretching method depending on the complexity of the photo. Methods such as the content-aware scale and content-aware fill give better results. On the other hand, methods like the transform tool and image size command are more straightforward.
