To do this process, I would use the Marquee tool combined with the crop command.
Select the rectangular marquee tool (m). On the option bar, there is a drop down box for "Style". Set this to "Fixed size", and type in for width "720 px" and height "534 px". Now click in your document, and you have a rectangular marquee of exactly those dimensions.
Move this marquee around till you have the area selected you want to keep, and go to "Image->Crop". Save this out in whatever format you want.
Thanks for the suggestion, that will help somewhat, however what I’m trying to do is shrink a much larger photo into the desired size. Your suggestion will work to touch up the picture once I’m close. (Newbie here by the way)
David,
You can use the crop tool and set the width to 720 and the height to 534. When you make your selection and hit enter it will up/down sample the image to 720×534. since you are using high res images it should always downsample as long as your selection is large enough.
So if your image is 1280×1024 and you use the crop tool with the 720×534 height and width specified and your selection is covering and area of the picture that is 1080×801 it would automaticaly crop and resize to 720×534. Be careful though because if you make a selection that is under 720×534 it will be enlarged to fit.
Awesome! That helps a lot. Thanks for the tip. That saves a lot of time.
No problem. Glad it worked for you.
Ahhh… I thought by "maintain resolution" you wanted NOT to resize the images. Good tip, PH.
I guess I should have said preserve the best resolution. Thanks again
