How to Enlarge Images in GIMP.
If You Don’t Have GIMP Yet, You’ll Need It.
GIMP is basically a photo editing software which can be downloaded free of charge
at https://www.gimp.org/ quickly so that within minutes you can be tweaking
your photos with this dynamic program.
You can use this free program to retouch your photos, for image
composition (tone, sharpness, scale, and arrangement), and for image authoring.
GIMP was originally written on a UNIX but it now works well on Mac OS X.
The instructions I am about to give you apply specifically to
working with Windows, however.
Someone once wrote “Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care; Youth like
summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.”.
So get those old photos of you and your friends in the summer sunshine out, scan
them, manipulate them with the GIMP, and then slap them onto your FaceBook home page.
Then learn to get out there and enjoy the solace and sagacity that
winter offers because it’s coming for you, no matter who you are.
Steps for Enlarging Images in Gimp.
Armed with little or no knowledge of how an image editor works, I downloaded GIMP
for the purpose of enlarging old photos that I had scanned so that someone wouldn’t
need binoculars to view them on a webpage.
The user interface tends to be a little bit complicated and overwhelming
for the novice user and at the time I downloaded the program the help
files were “temporarily unavailable.
Plan to spend some time getting the onion-layered GIMP.
It was frustrating because I accomplished my goal of enlarging
a photo to fit a full canvas but didn’t remember exactly how I did it.
Rediscovering the exact sequence which necessary to follow took some time.
Here is what you need to do.
Once you’ve downloaded GIMP, bring up the desired scanned photo you want to
work with using Windows Photo Gallery.
On the far right of your menu bar click and then GIMP from the drop down menu.
Your photo will open up ensconced with all the GIMP menus, features, rulers,
etc. There will be another long, rectangular tool box that pops up too.
Drag that box off to the side and leave it alone because we don’t
need it for this task and I don’t know what the hell it’s for anyway.
Your old photo was scanned but it now has a white border around three sides
because that is the way the scanner scanned it; tucked away in a corner.
Now you want that white border gone and that photo (or whatever portion of it you desire)
to fill up the canvas and leave no border.
Image 1 - Click on the Image drop down menu and choose Canvas Size option because
you’ll have to reposition the photo on the canvas before you can make the
image large enough to fill the canvas.
A dialog box appears.
Image 2 – Manipulate the numbers of Width and Height so that they decrease until the
black box is in the middle of the canvas in a shape that is the same as the picture.
Then drag the picture from corner so it fits in the box.
Play around with this back forth until it is just right.
When the picture and the black box line up, click resize and the box
will go away – don’t get scared.
Image 3 – You’re back to the same screen as Image 1.
Now click on the Image Menu again this time, click on Scale Image.
I increased the height and width several until the desired image filled the canvas.
Change the numbers and then click Scale to apply the changes which will
take a number of seconds to occur.
I had to increase the maximum size allowed by clicking on the Edit Menu;
drilling down to Preferences and adjusting the Maximum New Image Size.
I found 548 Megabytes suited my purposes.
Work with a copy first until you have figured out the right number for Pixel
Width and Height that suits your purposes.
Once you’ve enlarged one or with this process is a breeze.
By the way after I figured all this out I realized my scanner had a
built in feature to make all the work unnecessary so you might want to check
out your scanner’s features first.
But in any event all the instructions above will enable you to shrink or
enlarge your photos however you desire so this information is still worth knowing
about, especially since GIMP is free.