Having trouble finding the “resize” button in Lightroom?
You’re not going crazy: there isn’t one.
This isn’t some kind of facepalm oversight on the part of Lightroom’s developers — far from it.
Instead, Lightroom has a more powerful, flexible, and safer way of dealing with image resizing. But it means a different way of thinking about the whole process.
Instead of resizing the original image, you create a new copy by combining cropping and exporting to reach the size you want.
If that seems like extra steps, it is. So why would it be designed that way?
How resizing images works with a non-destructive editing workflow
The key is understanding the idea of non-destructive editing.
Like other leading image management apps, the idea is that the original image data itself is never edited or altered.1
That eliminates the risk of corrupting or degrading the original file. If you ever need to get back to the digital equivalent of a film negative, you can.
Think of it like this: if you were using slide film and you wanted a smaller image, you wouldn’t go and attack your slide with a pair of scissors.
It also means that unless you try quite hard you shouldn’t be able to accidentally overwrite your original image with a lower resolution or somehow degraded version–your master version should always be preserved. You don’t want to accidentally replace your original image with a resized thumbnail, for instance.
Of course, there are other ways you can accidentally delete files, so always, always be sure to have a robust, redundant backup system humming away.
So if you can’t actually resize in Lightroom Classic, how do you get an image at the size you want it?
This is where Lightroom’s powerful export functionality comes into play.
But first, you have to know the difference between cropping and resizing. They’re not the same thing, and you can do both to an image.
Cropping in Lightroom Classic & why it’s not the same as resizing
Cropping is choosing which parts of an image you want in the finished image.
It’s one of the tools in Lightroom’s Develop module.
You might zoom in to the center and eliminate some from all the sides, cut off just one side, create a square image, or create a long, thin panorama. What you’re doing with the crop tool is telling Lightroom that that’s the part of the image you want to work with.
I have a post specifically on the topics of cropping and straightening photos in Lightroom as well as rotating images. And if you’re looking for more control over your cropping, Lightroom includes a number of very useful crop tool overlays to help as guides.
Resizing in Lightroom Classic using the export function
Whereas cropping removes part of the image area, the resizing in this case will include all of the image area but adjust the dimensions as needed.
To get an image of a particular size, whether it’s a certain number of pixels wide or a particular number of inches tall, you approach things a bit differently.
Rather than trying to resize the original image, a much better and safer practice is to export a new version of the file that has the dimensions you want. Once you have that resized copy, you can do what you want with the copy without any risk to your original master image.
You can even reimport it back into Lightroom and stack it with the original image if you like, or you can create a special folder or category that holds just your resized images (one for thumbnail sizes, another for email sizes, etc).
Below are practical examples of the Image Sizing options in Lightroom’s export feature. To get there, select your image (or images) and go to File > Export, then look for the Image Sizing panel in the dialog box that opens.
For each of the Image Sizing methods available, I’ve included a screenshot showing the settings that were used to generate the output images. Each image’s caption includes the dimensions of the output image.
Image Sizing: Width & Height
The key difference between using Width & Height as opposed to Dimensions is that orientation comes into play.
Using this setting, regardless of the image orientation, the image will not be wider than the width setting you specify and not higher than the height setting you specify. Another way of putting it is that you’re specifying the horizontal measurement (width, across) and the vertical (height, up) measurements.
Here are two examples that were exported from Lightroom using exactly those Image Sizing settings. As you can see from the output dimensions, the orientation of the image matters with Image Sizing (unless you make them both the same).
Image Sizing: Dimensions
The Dimensions setting is similar to Width & Height but is agnostic of the image orientation.
Rather than specifying horizontal and vertical measurements, you’re specifying both the long and short edges. Input the maximum image dimensions you’d like to fit within and it will automatically scale, ignoring whether it’s actually the horizontal or vertical sides. If you want both portrait and landscape-oriented images to all come out the same size, this is the most useful setting to use.
Image Sizing: Long Edge
Use this setting if you’re only concerned about the longest side, ignoring whether it’s the horizontal or vertical measurement. The shortest side will not be restricted.
This setting can be very useful for resizing panoramas, where you want a consistent long-edge measurement regardless of how tall or short the image happens to be.
To show how this works in practice, here are three images exported with the same Long Edge setting of 1600px. The first two are standard landscape and portrait orientations–notice how the 1600px setting applies to whichever side is longest in each. The third is a panorama, where the long edge is much longer than the short edge, but the export still caps the long side at 1600px regardless.
Image Sizing: Short Edge
Use this setting if you’re only concerned about the shortest side, ignoring whether it’s the horizontal or vertical measurement. The longest side will not be restricted.
Image Sizing: Megapixels
The output to Megapixels has relatively specialized applications, including submitting to some stock agencies that set their royalty-free prices by megapixel image size. Some social media services also restrict image uploads by megapixel size.
It’s worth mentioning that this is not the same thing as file size. There is actually a separate option for that, but it’s not in the Image Sizing panel (more on that below).
Limit File Size
The megapixel option is not the same as limiting the file size. But you can limit by file size too. However, you won’t find that option in the Image Sizing panel; it’s in the File Settings panel above it.
The key difference with it is that it will adjust the amount of compression applied to keep the image under the file size threshold. It also respects the dimensions you use in the Image Sizing panel.
So if you use a small file size limit with high dimensions, you’ll end up with a heavily compressed image. Conversely, that same file size limit with much smaller dimensions will result in much less compression (and likely better image quality).
Percentage
This is a newer addition to the Image Sizing options. And it works a little differently from the settings above.
Unlike the other options here, all of which create a target output size, this works relative to the dimensions of the original image. So the outputs will vary based on which images you feed into it.
I won’t include output examples here mainly because the result varies entirely with the input image, so any specific example wouldn’t illuminate much.
Some sample image sizes
There are nearly an infinite number of image size settings that are possible that you can customize according to your own needs and preferences.
But if you’re looking for places to start for common scenarios, here are some suggestions. They are by no means hard and fast rules.
All are again measured in pixels because I find that it’s generally a safer and more flexible way of doing it than constantly cross-calculating Resolution if using physical measures like inches and centimeters.
Sending an image as an email attachment
Recommendation: Long Edge: 2100px
There’s no one right answer here, but 2100px is what I generally use.
The key here is to keep things a manageable size for email apps and services to handle. Some allow larger individual files than others. And end users might be viewing it on anything from a phone display to a tablet to a desktop display. I find that 2100px is a good place to start for any of those while also keeping the filesize manageable.
It’s also quite possible to use the Limit File Size option here, and that’s not a bad choice. The reason I don’t use it for this is that I typically start with very large images, and the file size option can result in heavy compression. The solution is to combine the Image Sizing with the Limit File Size, but I usually find I don’t really need to.
Uploading to social media
Recommendation: Long Edge: 2600px
Every social media service has its own specific image size requirements. And drilling down further than that, each uses different image sizes for different purposes on the service and on different devices.
It’s quite possible to optimize each placement image size, but that’s way beyond the scope of this post. I find that 2600px is a good catch-all safe option for most of the social media services like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and so on.
Printing an 8 x 10 inch print
Recommendation: Dimensions | Measurements: 2400 x 3000 | Resolution: 300 ppi
I generally prefer to use the more powerful Print module or external options for resizing for print because you have a lot more control over the output.
But if I need to use the Export feature, these are the settings I’d start with. If you use the Print module, that’s all taken care of in a better way.
What resolution setting should you use?
PPI of digital image files in pixels
The examples above all use pixels as the measuring system, in which case the Resolution setting (sometimes known as pixel density) doesn’t really matter because it’s digital from start to finish.
2400 x 3000 pixels with a Resolution setting of 72 ppi will result in functionally the same image as 2400 x 3000 pixels with a Resolution setting of 600 ppi.
You’ll often see “72 ppi” repeated as the standard for screen display, but that’s a holdover from early Macintosh displays in the 1980s and isn’t really meaningful for modern screens. Today’s displays vary widely–a typical desktop monitor sits somewhere around 90 to 110 ppi, while phone screens and high-density displays like Apple’s Retina range from around 220 to 460 ppi or higher. The PPI value baked into a JPEG’s metadata is a hint for print software; web browsers and screen rendering ignore it entirely.
So for digital display on a screen, the pixel density really isn’t relevant; you should only worry about the number of pixels wide and the number of pixels high.
If you get a request from a graphic designer to deliver files that are something like 3000 x 2400 pixels at 300 dpi, the “300 dpi” part is technically redundant because it’s referring to the printed output. But from experience, not every graphic designer or photo editor will be interested in arguing the point, so it’s safer to just use whatever setting they ask for.
DPI of prints or display density in centimeters or inches
The same is not true if you use a physical measure like centimeters or inches. In that case, the Resolution setting matters.
8 x 10 inches at a resolution of 72 ppi isn’t the same thing as 8 x 10 inches at 300 ppi. Physical measures are mostly used when you’re trying to create prints. Pixel densities used for print are typically in the 240 to 360 ppi range, with 300 ppi being the common commercial standard.2
If I’m resizing for making prints, I generally find Lightroom’s built-in Print module a better option than using Lightroom’s export function.
More advanced alternatives for Lightroom
The Image Sizing panel of Lightroom’s Export function is quite flexible, but there are ways to take things up a level.
For standard resizing
Lightroom’s Print Module: Don’t be put off by the name — Lightroom’s Print Module can also be used to create JPEGs and allows a lot of control over resizing options.
LR/Mogrify 2: A long-running export plugin by Timothy Armes that adds finer control over the export process–things like watermarking, adding text overlays, borders, and keylines. It’s worth mentioning that it’s an older plugin and hasn’t seen significant updates in some time, and a fair bit of what it once uniquely offered (like watermarking) is now handled natively in Lightroom Classic. But if you need the borders, keylines, or text overlay features, it’s still useful.
Resizing for print
Qimage: (Windows only) This does a lot more than image resizing. Qimage has long been leading the field on Windows systems in preparing images for print, whether you use your own printer or send to a photo lab. It also provides fine-grained control over all aspects of preparing images for print.
Going (really) big
Image upsizing–or “uprezzing”–is one of the endlessly debated topics in digital imaging, and there are many “right” answers because so much of it comes down to the look you’re going for and how much detail will actually be visible in the end product. If you’re framing a photo for the wall, will a viewer standing 6 feet away from it really be able to tell the difference between an image upsized with expensive AI software and one upsized with standard Lightroom functions? Only you can decide what the “right” answer is. After all, it’s your work on display.
Lightroom Classic’s built-in Super Resolution
Before reaching for a third-party tool, it’s worth knowing that Lightroom Classic has its own AI-based upscaler built right in. It was added in version 10.3 (June 2021) and is called Super Resolution, accessed via Photo > Enhance or by right-clicking an image and choosing Enhance.3
It produces a new DNG with double the linear resolution — so 2x the width, 2x the height, and 4x the total pixel count. It works on raw files, JPEGs, TIFFs, PSDs, and PNGs, although the results are typically best with raw files. There’s a hard limit of 65,000 pixels on the long side or 500 megapixels in the resulting file, so very large panoramas may not qualify.
It’s GPU-intensive and can take anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes per image depending on hardware. The output DNGs are also significantly larger than the originals, so it’s worth being mindful of disk space if you batch a lot of them.
For my workflow, Super Resolution covers a lot of cases that previously would have required a dedicated tool — cropped images that need to print larger, older lower-megapixel files getting a second life, that kind of thing. It’s not always the strongest option for extreme enlargements, but it’s free, it’s already in Lightroom, and the results are good enough that I’d try it first before paying for something else.
Dedicated upscaling apps
If you decide you want more control or quality than Lightroom’s built-in Enhance offers, there are several dedicated upscaling apps. The recent generation of these uses AI models that produce noticeably better results than the older fractal- and interpolation-based methods.
You can use the “external editor” functionality to add shortcuts in Lightroom to these tools, but they don’t technically integrate as seamlessly as Lightroom’s own functions, and most workflows involve first creating a TIFF version and working on that.
These are worth a look:
- ON1 Resize AI: Dedicated software that specializes in image upsizing and enlargement. The current version (Resize AI 2026) combines AI upscaling with the long-standing Genuine Fractals technology and works as a standalone app or as a plugin for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Capture One.
- Gigapixel AI: From Topaz Labs. Another app that specializes in upscaling, with several different AI models tuned to different image types.
Neither is inexpensive, so they might be overkill for occasional use — especially now that Lightroom’s own Super Resolution covers a lot of common scenarios. Both apps accomplish much the same thing but use different algorithms to get there, and the results have improved enormously in recent years. Both have trial versions worth running on your own files before committing to a license.
Notes & References:
- There are some limited exceptions if you have the preferences set to embed metadata in the image file directly. [↩︎]
- Some inkjet printers prefer specific native resolutions–Epson drivers commonly resample to 360 ppi, while Canon drivers tend to use 300 ppi–so feeding the printer at those values can avoid an extra resampling step. [↩︎]
- Adobe, “Improve image quality using Enhance,” Lightroom Classic Help. [↩︎]
