Zooming out? A bit more involved than the question looks!

[ScifiPAul]

Hi Everyone
Great forum and have only just come across it!

Hopefully someone can help me out here?

What I am looking to do is try to make a photo fit a certain area.

Picture in your mind a rectangle shape, or for instance the main profile pic for a Facebook page.

I want to fit a 10x8 photo or at least part of it into that rectangle shape.

I know I can reduce the size of it down, but when doing this it still does not allow the part of the photo that I want to use to correctly sit in the rectangle, for instance once I have reduced the 10x8 down as much as i can to fit the rectangle, it for instance cuts the legs off.

Is there a way of artificially zooming out of the picture then reducing it in photoshop so that it fits the rectangle, most likely what i have written is double dutch but f anyone can help it would be great!

I am using CS6

 

[ibclare]

In any version of PS, you have one choice as far as I can see. You need to transform the image. Unless you want the entire picture to fit as a part of the rectangle, it isn't physically possible to set a square peg into a round hole, though many (2 year olds) have tried. You can trasform it but to make it a rectangle you will have to distort it and have a very fat version of your image, lol. Otherwise you will have to decide what can get cut off. You can do that simply by positioning it within the canvas; you won't have to transform anything since part of the picture will be outside the bounds of the canvas. You can then use the move tool to position it and experiment to see how you like it best. That's all I can think of to advise.

That, of course, is assuming I understand your question. Correct me if I misunderstood.