Wednesday, March 31, 2010

CoffeeShop 101: Stretching Your Images!



There are times you want to force your images to fit certain spaces that aren't your standard 4x6 ratio. For example, I wanted to use the image above in a header, but if I tried to fit it in a long rectangle, once I cropped it down to taste I would have an excess of white space.  Luckily with the magic of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, there is a very simple fix.  :-)

If your image has extra space on the side, especially space that is "out of focus", you can stretch it!


For this tutorial I wanted to make a 800px by 300px header. I dragged and dropped my image on that header, clicked Ctrl-T and free transformed the image to taste (see below).

As you can tell I have a lot of space that is not being used. Luckily I took this image with one of my favorite lenses, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II and I have a great bokeh "out of focus" background. I could easily stretch this!



Simply select the area (I used the rectangular marquee tool, M) you wish to stretch on the image layer, and Ctrl-T (free transform) the selected area and stretch it out. You can do this on any side of the image, as long as you have a simple background.  Make sure you don't include body parts in your selection or you might get a pretty interesting mutated effect!

As you can see in the image below, my photo fits the space and I don't have any more "white" space. Pretty neat trick, right?

Hope this tutorial helps you stretch your images! 

13 comments:

  1. Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [31 Mar 02:00pm GMT]. Thanks, Maria

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  2. thanks so much for explaining this! i can't wait to try it out.

    ashley

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  3. Rita- thank you for explaining this! Have heard the term thrown around - never really understood how to achieve this!

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  4. Thanks so much for all your help on this site!! I have had cups and cups and cups of coffee with you!!

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  5. I have failed to mention what I often think: Those boys are soooooo cute!

    Will this work if you don't have a frame? (I tried to stretch and image via canvas, with no success. It was a photo of a woman and I needed more above her head. Tried to clone but that didn't work either.) Hootnonny

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  6. Perfect Timing! I've been wanting to print some gallery wraps but could not for the life of me figure out how to stretch the image without messing up the faces...thanks!!

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  7. This is awesome! Thanks so much for all the info & tips!

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  8. Thank you so much for all your help!

    Jessica

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  9. Thanks so much! I can't wait to try it out :)
    Rita

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  10. Thanks for all your tutorials. I did know how to do this stuff but some of the things you post about I don't know and I always find great tips. Hopefully you'll also help make images around us prettier! Thank you thank you!

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  11. I can't get this to work! I just end up with a blank white space. What am I doing wrong?

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Thank you for taking the time to leave a message, I love reading them! All comments are personally moderated by me and I will post and answer them them as soon as possible.
Rita