The latest addition to your toolkit is “DigiWidgets,” which will allow you to automatically resize most images to 300 X 200 in one or two clicks.

Here’s how to use it:

  1. Click on “DigiWidgets” on the menu bar on the left of your dashboard.
  2. Click the “Add New” button next to the title at the top of the page.
  3. On the screen that pops up, enter the name of your image as the Project Name.
  4. For “Project Size,” from the drop-down menu choose “Small Horizontal (300×200).”
  5. Click “Create Project.”
  6. That brings you into your Media Library, where you can select an image already in the library, or you can upload an image.
  7. Choose the image you wish to resize by clicking on it (which results in a blue border around the image and a check mark in the upper right), then click the “Select” button in the lower right of your screen. (Known quirk: you may have to click on the “Select” button more than once.)
  8. That brings up the “DigiWidgets Editor” screen. You will see the image you have selected in a box labeled “300×200.” The image will be scaled down vertically or horizontally, keeping the aspect ratio, to fit in that space.
  9. If your image has a white background, and the image is centered in the box, just click on “Save Project” and the image goes into the Media Library.
  10. If your image has a background of another color…
    1. You need to create a second layer that will go underneath the your image, matching the background color of that image. We will populate the Media Library with backgrounds of various colors that you can use, but if none of those works, let me know and I’ll create a special background in the color you need.
    2. To add the second layer, click the big plus (+) button or the “Add Images” link. This will take you back to your Media Library, where, once again, you can upload a new file or select one already in the library.
    3. Once you have selected your background image, it will show up as a second image in this “Project.”
    4. In the DigiWidgets Editor, click on the thumbnail of the background image (it should be to the left of your original image in the box that also contains the plus sign).
    5. Now click in the 300 x 200 box, which will activate the Tools to the right of the box.
    6. In the second row, you will see a down-arrow icon. Click that icon to move your background image behind the image you want to resize, so that image shows on top of the background. If everything looks okay, click on the “Save Project” button and the resized, combined image will be placed in the Media Library.

Special Cases

DigiWidgets works very well most of the time. But if you have an image with a complex background – like a photograph or a gradient – some other measures will have to be taken, and in a program like Photoshop. How you handle the image to get it to the right size depends on some factors:

  1. Start with the largest image possible.
  2. Use Photoshop’s Crop Tool with a 300 x 200 preset, to focus and resize your image. (There is usually material at the top and/or bottom of an image that no one will miss, and often times that gives you the wind need.)

If this doesn’t work, let me know.