The Distorted Photo
When you insert a photograph or a chart into a Google Doc, you often need to resize it to fit the page perfectly. By default, Google Docs “locks” the aspect ratio of the image. This means if you grab a corner handle and drag it to make the image shorter, Google Docs will automatically make the image narrower at the exact same time, preserving the original proportions so the image doesn’t look stretched or squished.
Almost all the time, this is exactly what you want. However, there are rare instances—such as when you are dealing with an abstract background texture, a simple gradient block, or a spacer image—where you want to stretch the image horizontally without increasing its height. If the aspect ratio is locked, Google Docs will stubbornly refuse to let you distort the image. You must manually bypass this lock.
How to Resize an Image Freely (Ignore Aspect Ratio)
You can stretch or squash an image by using the side handles rather than the corner handles.
- Open your document in Google Docs.
- Click once on the image you want to resize.
- A blue bounding box will appear around the image with eight small blue square handles.
- To resize proportionally (locked aspect ratio): Click and drag any of the four corner handles.
- To distort the image (unlock aspect ratio): Click and drag any of the four middle handles (located in the center of the top, bottom, left, or right edges).
Dragging a middle handle will force the image to stretch or compress in only one direction. If you need precise mathematical control over the distortion, you can also right-click the image, select Image options, open the Size & Rotation panel on the right, uncheck the Lock aspect ratio box, and manually type in your desired, non-proportional width and height dimensions.