Tutorials Index

Beagle Smudge
Color Management
Color Spots
Crop Tool
FFT Action
Gradient Artifacts
Gradient Mask
Layer Mask Basics
Out of Bounds
Smooth Skin Action
Sky Replacement
Window Arrange

USING THE CROP TOOL FROM A TECHNICAL POINT OF VIEW

Foreword:
This article is not intended to teach you how to enhance the design by cropping but simply a list of the functions and how to use the crop tool. I tried to explain every single option with this tool and some other ways of achieving the same result. If you think something could be added or found that it's incorrect, feel free to let me know.

[The Basics] To use the crop tool, click on its icon or use the keyboard shortcut (C). Click and drag across your image to create the crop area. Refine the size if necessary and confirm by clicking Enter (Return), double clicking inside the crop area, right click and choose "Crop", go to Image/Crop or use the confirm icon in your toolbar . To cancel, hit the Escape key on your keyboard, right click and choose "Cancel" or use the cancel icon in your toolbar .

To change the size, click and drag on the handles of the frame. Hold down the Shift key while you drag a corner point, to maintain the proportion of the current width/height. If you hold down the Shift key before you drag the rectangular shape the first time, it will constrain it to a square (equal length of height and width). When you confirm the crop, the area outside of the crop area will be deleted.

[Crop Shield] For visual aid, the area which is going to be deleted, is darkened by the shield. You can change the colour and the transparency of the overlay in the toolbar on top of you screen, once the first crop area has been drawn. Turn it off completely, if you prefer a look like the marquee tool.

[Rotating] To rotate the crop area, move your mouse outside of the crop area and the arrow will turn into an icon for Rotate. Hold down the Shift key while rotating, if you would like to quickly turn it 90 degrees as an example. To change the point of rotation, reposition the handle in the center of the crop area before rotating.

For more information and details for the size and the angle of the crop area, turn on your info window (F8). If you have to rotate an image exactly according to a certain degree, you might find it easier to use the Measure Tool to measure a horizontal line as an example, then go to Image/Rotate Canvas/Arbitrary..., which populates the input for the angle automatically according to your measure tool's angle. Rotate the canvas and then use the Crop Tool and crop with the same proportions.

If you are aiming for a level horizon, here is one way to do it. Create your initial selection for the crop tool, then move it up until one of the handles indicating the middle of the frame is exactly on the horizon.

Drag the middle point and let go over that handle you've just aligned. Now move the mouse outside of the frame and rotate the selection until the handle on the opposite side is over the horizon. Move the crop back into place as desired and crop.

[Cropped Area] There is an option to either delete or hide the area outside the frame for a crop. This is not available, if all you have is a locked background. You need to have at least one layer.

By default, this is set to Delete. If you Hide the area, it can be revealed again later but keep in mind that the file size will stay the same. To reveal the hidden area, go to Image/Reveal All or use the crop tool and drag it out into the gray canvas, to enlarge the canvas and reveal the hidden area.

[Canvas Size] To resize the Canvas, you can go to Image/Canvas Size or use Ctrl+Alt+C. Alternately, you can use the crop tool to do this visually. First, zoom out or use the Full Screen mode (F) to see the canvas. Now click and drag across the image, starting from the outside of the image and ending somewhere diagonally, again outside the image. The first time, it will automatically snap to the border but if you pick up the handle and drag it again, you will be able to extend it into the canvas area.

If you have previously hidden some areas, this will reveal that part. If you have a background layer, it will extend the canvas using your background colour. If you are working on a layer and do not have a background, the newly created canvas area will be transparent.

[Width/Height/Resolution] This is the area where you can define the size of your crop area and the resulting image after the crop.

Leaving everything empty, will be similar to using the marquee tool for a crop. If you want to use the same proportion as your image, click and drag across your image starting on the top left and ending on the bottom right. The crop will snap to the border and you can now hold the Shift key and drag one of the corner handles to resize with the same aspect ratio as your original image.

Using Width and Height but leaving the Resolution empty, will give you a way to define the size. When you crop, Photoshop will change the Resolution accordingly.

Using Width, Height and Resolution will resize the image and change its resolution to fit your input. This can be used before you print your image to a photo paper with certain width and height, plus the ideal resolution for your printer.

If you have an image ready for print and everything is set but you want to crop it slightly without changing the resolution or size, use the Front Image button. This will populate the empty fields with the size and resolution of your present image. When you crop, the photo will automatically be upsized and the resulting image is the same size and resolution as your original. The image interpolation used for upsizing is set in your Preferences. Go to Edit/Preferences/General and see the Image Interpolation field for your settings. Bicubic should be set by default, which is fine but if you upsize a lot, you might want to use Bicubic Smoother and then sharpen again after resizing.

To delete the settings, click the Clear button, manually delete the individual numbers or go to the fly out menu to reset the tool.

[Presets] To simplify your daily cropping for print and similar, you can use some of the default presets or save your own. Click on the crop tool icon in the toolbar on top of your screen, to see the presets.

You can create your own by saving the present settings as I have done in this example. Open the fly out menu for further options to save and load your presets. See screen shot under Width/Height/Resolution for the menu.

[Perspective] The perspective cropping can be used to "straighten out" a photo and crop at the same time. As seen in the Help file of Photoshop, a photo taken with the camera pointed upwards to the door is an example. With CS2, I would suggest having a look at the lens correction filter too for that particular correction.

Another example might be a photo of a framed picture behind glass. To avoid the reflection of the glass, take the photo in a slight angle and then use the perspective crop tool to "straighten it out". Example beneath from left to right. First photo was taken straight on with obvious reflection of the flash light in the glass. Second was taken from a slight angle, then the perspective crop tool was used to create the picture on the right.

Yet another example for what I use this tool quite often, are panoramic shots, after using Photomerge set to perspective. With two or three images, this might not be necessary but with 5 or more photos merged together, using the standard crop can result in cutting away important parts of the image.

Draw the initial cropping marquee, adjust the corner handles and align them with the corners of the merged photo, then use the side handles to move the cropping bounds to fit your image.

[Tips] While your crop area is active, you can press and hold the Spacebar to move your image.

For more precise control of the crop tool, zoom in closer (Ctrl and +).

If you like to crop only a few pixels from the border, you might have to turn off the snap to document bounds. Go to View/Snap To/... and turn off the Document Bounds. To do this temporary, hold down the Ctrl key while moving the handles.

To crop away all the area around a subject on a neutral background, use Trim instead. Go to Image/Trim and choose which pixels the crop should be based on. This will delete as much as possible, without touching the subject.

[Other Tools] As with most things in Photoshop, there is more than one way to do it. With CS2, you can also use a simplified crop tool when you first open a RAW file in ACR. This will mark the crop area in your RAW file. It will not delete the area but when you open the file, it will only be the cropped photo, as seen at the bottom of the ACR screen under Crop Size. That way, you can also synchronize with other images and apply the same crop across all photos.

Another popular tool many people like to use, is the Rectangular Marquee tool. This has similar presets like the Crop Tool but does not alter the resolution. There you can also set a fixed aspect ratio, to get the dimensions you like. Remember to make sure the Feather is set to 0, except you are feathering on purpose. To resize and rotate, you will need to use the Select/Transform Selection command and to crop the area outside the selection, go to Image/Crop.

You now know HOW to crop but if you want to learn WHERE to crop, have a look at this tutorial from Lunacore about the "Rule of Thirds".

Updated: November 9, 2005 (tested with PS CS2)