Picture squished.

Stuzapem · Apr 7, 2025

Hi Guys, this is my first post on the forum. Can you give me a heads-up on this? Keep it simple.
If I save a JPG 5" x 8" book cover Photo from PHOTOS after making minor adjustments in EDIT and save to pictures, the picture saved appears as if in vertical format (squished) and not in horizontal format 5" x 8". If I want to transfer the said squished picture, sometimes it opens out to the correct horizontal format, sometimes not. Grrrrr! Any ideas?
Ideally I would like to save the edited picture to PDF but PHOTOS does not give that option.

telepro21 · Apr 7, 2025

Hello Stuzapem,

Welcome to the Forum!

I agree that PHOTOS does not provide a choice to export a picture into PDF format.

After successfully editing a picture in PHOTOS, I opened the result in Affinity Photo where I could export to PDF.

Looks to me like you may need an additional piece of software to accomplish your goal.

Perhaps someone else on this forum with more experience will chime in with another idea or process that will work.

Stuzapem · Apr 7, 2025

Just a bit more info. I opened my book template in GIMP (good idea) using the Export As and used Select File Type (By extension) and chose PDF. It was saved in Pictures, and still, I found my book cover squished. Any ideas?

telepro21 · Apr 7, 2025

Hmm... Okay, you refer to the image as a. jpg file, however, how was it created?
Is it possible that there is some form of embedded format that is affecting the aspect ratio when the file is opened? (even in GIMP)

Stuzapem · Apr 8, 2025

Hi Telepro21,
Thanks for getting back to me. The book cover was initially put together professionally and sent to me in PDF form. Much later and because of circumstances I needed to make minor adjustments to the cover (enhance and sharpen etc) and so imported it into GIMP as a PNG file. So far, so good until I came to EXPORT AS PDF. When I checked it out in pictures, it came out squished. All of the book cover originally in horizontal form turned out vertical. I am beginning to think you are right with your comment (Is it possible that there is some form of embedded format that is affecting the aspect ratio when the file is opened?) However, I am not clever enough to work that one out. Hey Ho.
I would have posted an image of the problem, but I thought it might be construed as advertising.

Helmut · Apr 8, 2025

GIMP is way over the top for your purpose, making it a bit of a hard learning curve. Goes against keeping it simple.
Basically you need to use the Help pages of GIMP.
e.g.

4.2. Change the Size of an Image for the screen

Section 4.2 last sentence.

GIMP - Documentation

GIMP User Manual¶ GIMP comes with a built-in help system, available in dozens of languages. Once you have started the program, press F1 for context-sensitive help. You may have to install the help pages from a separate package (gimp-help), depending on how your version of GIMP was packaged. The...

www.gimp.org

GIMP Documentation

JPG is not good for editing as it is lossy and repeated saves loses quality, better to use PNG or TIFF.

There are quite a number of simpler Image Editors like IrfanView, Paint.NET etc.

spapakons · Apr 8, 2025

I am not not sure if this is possible with Adobe Reader, but you can export a single image as JPEG, at least in Adobe Acrobat Pro. You have done this already. Have you tried to PRINT the modified image to Microsoft PDF printer, instead of export to PDF? It might place the image on a A4 (or Letter) page at the correct aspect ratio. Choose landscape orientation before printing to maximize image size on page.

Dannydet · Apr 8, 2025

If the file was sent to you in PDF format, you should be opening that PDF file using Adobe Acrobat or any other application made by Adobe, to play it safe, in my opinion. Also the correct terminology is "Portrait" (taller than wider) and "Landscape" (wider than taller) mode and keep that in mind when saving the file if you edit it.

Stuzapem · Apr 8, 2025

Thank you, Helmut, Spapakons & Dannydet, for your suggestions and help. Although I always try to keep things simple sometimes things just conspire to screw the whole thing. I am certainly on a learning curve, but with your help, I've gained a fair bit of understanding. :facepalm:

johnp · Apr 8, 2025

LibreOffice Draw can open and edit PDF files.

spapakons · Apr 8, 2025

Alternative method to convert a JPEG (or whatever) image to PDF:

Right-click on the image file and select Print. Select "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the printer, "Full page photo" and uncheck the box to "Fit the image on page". This should give an as large as possible image on a A4 or Letter size page preserving the correct aspect ratio. Just like you want. The default orientation is "landscape" (horizontal). If you want to change it to "portrait" (vertical), click on Options at bottom right and then on Printer Properties. Go to the Layout tab and change to "portrait". Click the Print button, you will prompted for a file name to save your PDF.

spapakons · Apr 9, 2025

I remember back in Windows XP that we needed to use a special utility to print our photos in special layouts, such as two or more on a single page. Thankfully since Windows 7 this is possible by just right-clicking on the file and select Print from the list. From there you can go to advanced options, printer settings and select a photo paper or whatever else you want.

Stuzapem · Apr 9, 2025

Well, I am about to give up on this one. I tried using IrfanView, an image viewer. I had to download and install a PDF.DLL. I opened my PNG book cover in IrfanView and saved it as a PDF. Can you believe it opened in PDF squished? Grrrrrr! Instead of throwing the computer through the window (not good), I decided to go for a jog. Anyway, thanks for all your help. I have learned a lot, just not how to save a PNG to PDF in its correct format.

spapakons · Apr 9, 2025

We you are trying to convert to PDF and not PRINT it to a PDF printer? Apart from the official Adobe PDF printer (requires Adobe Acrobat Pro) and Microsoft Print to PDF, there are third-party solutions such as BullZIP PDF printer I used in Windows 7. All of these printers produce a PDF file, just like you want.

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