In Short
Downscaling (reducing dimensions) can be done with 100% sharp fidelity using high-quality bicubic or Lanczos canvas interpolation. Always lock your aspect ratio (e.g. 16:9 or 4:3) to prevent stretching, and avoid upscaling raster images beyond their original native pixel resolution.
Downscaling vs Upscaling
Downscaling combines multiple pixel samples into fewer pixels, which actually sharpens apparent visual clarity. In contrast, upscaling requires inventing data that does not exist in the source image, leading to blurriness.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does an image look stretched after resizing?
An image becomes distorted when its width and height are altered independently without preserving the original aspect ratio.