Fit, fill and stretch
Resizing changes how many pixels an image has. The only real decision is what happens when the shape you want does not match the shape you have, and the three answers are genuinely different.
- Fit inside a box
- The whole image is kept and made as large as it can be within your dimensions. Nothing is cropped, so the result may be narrower or shorter than the box.
- Fill and crop
- The box is filled exactly and whatever hangs over the edge is cut. Right for avatars and thumbnails, wrong when the edges matter.
- Stretch to exact
- Both dimensions are forced. This distorts the picture unless the proportions already matched, and it is almost never what someone wants.