How To Select and Resize a Collage Image for a Craft Project

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The challenge – you have just discovered the ideal digital image to complete your craft project BUT its on a collage sheet and is to small for the final print size required. How do you select, create a new document and resize the image to fit your craft project?

Solution – is to load the collage sheet into a graphics program, use the “Marquee selection tool” to select the desired image, then copy it and paste into a new document of the desired print size. Next use the “Move tool” to select and then hold “Shift” key while selecting and dragging the diagonal corner arrows (to keep the image proportions) to resize the image to the new desired size and then align it on the document where wanted.

Be aware with JPG images increasing to a much larger size will reduce image quality and cause pixilation (squared edges) so a best practise is to find an image as close to your finished print size as possible with some margin for up-sizing. Its often easier to down-size a larger JPG image to a smaller size as it keeps better image quality.

In the following video I demonstrate how to do this using Photoshop CS2:

1. Open your chosen collage sheet in Photoshop
2. Use the “Marquee selection tool” (rectangular one here) to select the desired image, then copy it by pressing  “Control+C” (command+c on Mac).
3. Create a new document with the desired size (here I chose 5×7 inch) and then “Control+V” (command+V on Mac) to paste image onto the new document.
4. Next use the Move tool to select and then hold “Shift” key while selecting and dragging the diagonal corner arrows to resize the image to the new desired size
5. Then align it on the document where wanted and save as a JPG with desired file name.

If you like the collage sheet used in the video you can find it here

Please leave any questions and feedback in the comments below.