How do I make an image resize to scale in Qt?

There are a couple ways to do this, but most of all I would recommend maybe not fighting against the layout system by trying to hint the aspect. As you can see, you are having to try and implement a number methods trying to help the layout.

I can offer two examples. Neither of them use layouts…

The first uses a child QLabel to show the image, and drives its fixed size off of the resize event:

// imagelabel.h

class ImageLabel : public QWidget
{
    Q_OBJECT

public:
    explicit ImageLabel(QWidget *parent = 0);
    const QPixmap* pixmap() const;

public slots:
    void setPixmap(const QPixmap&);

protected:
    void resizeEvent(QResizeEvent *);

private slots:
    void resizeImage();

private:
    QLabel *label;
};

// imagelabel.cpp

ImageLabel::ImageLabel(QWidget *parent) :
    QWidget(parent)
{
    label = new QLabel(this);
    label->setScaledContents(true);
    label->setFixedSize(0,0);
}

void ImageLabel::resizeEvent(QResizeEvent *event) {
    QWidget::resizeEvent(event);
    resizeImage();
}

const QPixmap* ImageLabel::pixmap() const {
    return label->pixmap();
}

void ImageLabel::setPixmap (const QPixmap &pixmap){
    label->setPixmap(pixmap);
    resizeImage();
}

void ImageLabel::resizeImage() {
    QSize pixSize = label->pixmap()->size();
    pixSize.scale(size(), Qt::KeepAspectRatio);
    label->setFixedSize(pixSize);
}

The second example is based off of the answer given by @Arnold_Spence. It is even shorter as it doesn’t use a child QLabel. It just draws the pixmap in the paint event:

// imagelabel2.h

class ImageLabel2 : public QWidget
{
    Q_OBJECT

public:
    explicit ImageLabel2(QWidget *parent = 0);
    const QPixmap* pixmap() const;

public slots:
    void setPixmap(const QPixmap&);

protected:
    void paintEvent(QPaintEvent *);

private:
    QPixmap pix;
};

// imagelabel2.cpp

ImageLabel2::ImageLabel2(QWidget *parent) :
    QWidget(parent)
{
}

void ImageLabel2::paintEvent(QPaintEvent *event) {
    QWidget::paintEvent(event);

    if (pix.isNull())
        return;

    QPainter painter(this);
    painter.setRenderHint(QPainter::Antialiasing);

    QSize pixSize = pix.size();
    pixSize.scale(event->rect().size(), Qt::KeepAspectRatio);

    QPixmap scaledPix = pix.scaled(pixSize,
                                   Qt::KeepAspectRatio,
                                   Qt::SmoothTransformation
                                   );

    painter.drawPixmap(QPoint(), scaledPix);

}

const QPixmap* ImageLabel2::pixmap() const {
    return &pix;
}

void ImageLabel2::setPixmap (const QPixmap &pixmap){
    pix = pixmap;
}