Fit or fill: what happens to your photo?
The frame has one shape; your image may have another. Fit and fill solve that mismatch in different ways, without stretching the picture.
Fit keeps the entire image
Fit scales the image until it touches two opposite edges of the frame. If the shapes differ, the other two edges have unused space. The tool leaves this space white.
A 3:2 image inside a 10 × 10 cm frame becomes 10 × 6.67 cm. It has about 1.67 cm of white space above and below. The frame is still 10 × 10 cm, but the visible image is smaller.
Fill covers the frame
Fill scales the image enough to cover all four edges, then removes what lies outside. Print Size Bench uses a centered crop. A 3:2 image filling a square loses equal amounts from its left and right sides.
If a person or important text is near an edge, inspect the preview carefully. The current tool does not let you drag the crop position. For an off-center composition, crop the image in your image editor first, then open that copy.
How the resolution changes
The print-size checker reports effective PPI after the chosen fit. It also reports how much source area is removed and how large the image actually prints. A crop does not invent more detail: it uses fewer of the original pixels.
Choose by what matters
- For artwork with a border, diagrams or text, start with Fit so none of the content disappears.
- For a photograph that must cover a fixed opening, start with Fill and check the crop.
- If every millimeter of the visible image must match a requirement, choose a frame with the same aspect ratio as the source.
Try the same image both ways
Open the sample in the print layout tool, choose a square frame, then switch Fit and Fill. The colored reference pattern makes the removed area easy to see. The print document uses the same selected behavior as the preview.