This is just really a memo to myself – just worked this out, I need to scribble it down somewhere where I won’t lose it!
Problem: I’ve been given a PAL widescreen still from a video and I need to put it on a web page. It looks squashed for two reasons – because the pixels are not square and because it’s anamorphic 16:9
I need to get it looking good on a web page, and I have Photoshop Elements as my tool.
First, open the squashed image – this is 720×576 pixels.
Resize it so it’s 768×576 pixels – make sure ‘Constrain Proportions’ is NOT ticked, and ‘Resample Image’ IS ticked.
Your image now has square pixels, but it’s still squashed because it’s anamorphic.
So now resize it again, this time make the width 1024 pixels (this is 1.7777777 times 768, its width in square pixels).
Or given what I started with and ended with, I guess you can just multiply the original still frame’s width by 1.422222222222222222222222222222