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Last Updated:
Jan 20th, 2007 - 12:55:03 |
The Crop tool is accessible from the tools palette or using the keyboard shortcut C. While the crop tool can be used for a number of other purposes including quickly increasing canvas size, and correcting perspective its main function is to reduce the size of an image by removing an area of the image.
Open a photo to the workspace, duplicate the image so as not to affect the original, (Image> duplicate) resize the image (Image> Image Size) by changing the resolution to 300ppi (make sure bicubic resampling is unchecked). This ensures you are working on a print size image and can better judge the results of cropping.
Choose View> Fit on Screen.
Select crop
The crop tool information appears along the Options bar.
By clicking on the drop down arrow next to the crop symbol, you access a number a presets. As digital photos are not the same size as a standard photograph you will need to crop any image you wish to frame or print for a standard photo album, mat etc. Choosing a preset will ensure that your crop proportion is accurate. As an example choosing Crop 4 in x 6in will allow you to draw out a crop area that is in the proportions of a 6x4 print – it will allow you to exceed the actual physical size of 6 in x 4 in which can be seen by viewing the rulers (View> Rulers). Choosing Crop 4 inch x 6 inch at 300ppi similarly allows you to select only at a proportion – Photoshop then resamples the area selected to increase the resolution to 300ppi – this may affect the quality of the image and as a general rule avoid using these options unless your crop dimensions will not support the resolution you need. As your photo will already be sized for 300ppi you can be assured that the selection you make that is equal to or above the chosen dimensions will be of print quality at 300ppi.
To reverse the proportions (ie change portrait to landscape orientation) click on the double arrows to swap the measurements. You can also add presets to the list by typing in your desired measurements and then from the drop down box chose the New Preset icon (paper with folded corner)
To create a custom crop area, choose clear and simply draw out the area you wish to keep. The areas that will be discarded will be hidden with a translucent grey colour.
You can change the color and opacity or turn off this shield after you have selected a crop area
You can adjust any crop selection using the selection handles. Using the corner handles will constrain the proportions while using the side handles will change the aspect ratio. Placing the cursor in the middle of the cropped image allows you to move the selection. Placing the cursor outside of the selection will allow you to rotate the image.
To create a custom crop size or proportion you need to enter in the height and width values in either inches or centimeters. You can also use pixel values by typing px after each value.
To commit to a crop, right click and choose Crop or press Enter.
To cancel a crop, right click and choose Cancel or press Escape.
Things to Note:
* Use the rulers to determine an exact crop size without resampling, and possibly affecting your image quality.
* Cropping is not always the first thing you should do, a part of the image that you do not intend to keep may become vital during the photo editing process (with cloning or perspective correction for example). Decide if cropping is required immediately or, if it can be completed after other photo editing processing, crop at a later stage.
* The "Front Image" button on the options bar allows you to crop one image based on the exact values of another image. When you click this button, the height, width, and resolution fields will fill in automatically using the values of the active document. You can then switch to another document and crop to these same values.
* After you draw a crop selection, you have a checkbox on the options bar to adjust the perspective. When you select the perspective check box, you can move your cursor over any of the corner handles and then click and drag each corner of the crop marquee independently. This is only useful for images that are titled rather than distorted. For more accurate perspective correction use Edit> Transform> Perspective
* In PSCS2 the Trim command is another alternative that is useful for cropping images with borders such as scanned images with the classic white border.
* You can also use the Selection Marquee Tool to crop an image.
© Copyright 2003-2005 by Scrapbook-Bytes; & original creator/s of tutorials/articles
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