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You’ve got a photo frame and want to fill it with an image at the precise dimensions, say 6in x 4in. You go to your favourite art app, but it ain’t interested. It can print on different size papers, no problem, but if you want to print an image at a specific size on regular A4 paper, it can’t help you.
Stop screaming and wasting ink. Here’s how to print an image at the exact size you need it using a free piece of software.
First, you need to download the magnificent IrfanView. You can download the app directly from the IrfanView website.
Once the software has been installed on your PC, fire up the application, then click File > Open and select the photo you wish to print.
Now select File > Print or press Ctrl + P together to open the Print menu.
At the top of the window that appears, make sure the correct printer and paper size is selected. Remember, it doesn’t matter if the paper you’re using is larger than the size of the image you want to print. We’re going to show you how to control the exact size of the image itself, not the paper.
Now transfer your attention to the bottom of the Print window and select which unit you wish to work in – centimetres or inches.
Next, in the middle of the window, where it says Print Size, select Custom. Make sure the Aspect Ratio is ticked to avoid the image being warped. If your image isn’t in the correct aspect ratio for the frame you wish to fill, see our Fixing the Aspect Ratio instructions below.
If at this point your image is already looking warped, don’t panic. Enter the width of the image you wish to print in the Width box and the height will automatically be adjusted. So, in the screenshot below, I entered a width of 6in and the height was automatically adjusted to 4in.
Press Print and a precise 6in x 4in emerges on a sheet of A4. Cut it out, and pop it in the frame.
So what if the frame you’re trying to fill has a different aspect ratio to your photo? Most cameras shoot at an aspect ratio of 3:2 (three parts wide for every two parts high), which is why the image above would fit perfectly in a 6in x 4in frame. But what if you were trying to fill a 7in x 5in frame?
You could just untick the Aspect Ratio box in the instructions above, but you’ll end up with a warped image because the photo is being squashed or stretched into an ‘unnatural’ shape.
The best thing to do is crop the image to the aspect ratio of the frame you’re trying to fill.
To do this in IrfanView, press Shift + C together to open the Create Custom Selection menu. There are plenty of common ratios to choose from there, but our 7:5 ratio isn’t among them. In that case, select custom ratio and enter 1.4 (which is 7 divided by 5), then click the “Save and draw on image” button.
Now, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and drag the mouse over the image. This will draw a box around your image at the correct aspect ratio. Repeat until you’ve got all the key bits of the image within the selection. When you’re happy with the selection, click Edit > Cut Area Outside of Selection and you’ll be left with a perfectly sized image that’s ready to print using the instructions above.
Related reading: How to get the best AI art from Adobe Firefly in Photoshop
Printing an image to a specific size on a Mac is much easier, because you can do this with the Preview tool that’s built into macOS.
When you open an image on a Mac, it will normally open in Preview by default. But if you’ve changed your default photo app, right click on the image and select Open With… and choose Preview.
Now click Tools > Adjust Size and you should see a menu like the one shown below:
The first thing to do is untick the Resample image box, as this can result in extra pixels being stuffed into your image that are going to make it look fuzzy. Then make sure Scale proportionally is ticked.
To print a 6in x 4in image, change the width to 6 and make sure the units box is set to “inches”. Assuming you’re using a 3:2 image, the height should automatically change to 4in, as shown above. Click OK.
Now enter the print menu (you can press Command + P to do this) and your image should be ready to print at the stipulated size. If it’s still filling the entire page, tick Scale instead of Scale to Fit and make sure that the scale is set to 100%, as shown below.
