CROPPING

Cropping not only gets rid of unwanted portions of an image but it can also make a bad photograph look a whole lot better.

You can access the CROP TOOL in the toolbox by clicking on it or use the keyboard shortcut, COMMAND C for Mac or CONTROL C for Windows:

To crop, drag across your image with the CROP TOOL and then release the mouse. A CROP MARQUEE will appear. It looks like a box of dashed lines with tiny boxes in each corner that serve as handles. The area inside of this box is your CROP SELECTION. When you apply the crop, everything outside of the box is cut away:

You can adjust your CROP SELECTION in several ways:

• Drag a box handle to increase or decrease the size of the CROP MARQUEE.
• To constrain proportions (increase or decrease width and height in an exact ratio to one another), hold down the SHIFT key as you drag a corner box handle.
• To move the CROP MARQUEE to a new location, put your cursor inside the crop selection box and simply drag it to a new location.
• You can also rotate the CROP MARQUEE. This is handy for straightening images and fixing crooked horizons. Just position the cursor outside the CROP MARQUEE and the cursor will change into a curved set of arrows. Click, hold, and drag up or down to rotate the CROP MARQUEE.

Once the CROP MARQUEE is where you want it, double-click inside the CROP SELECTION to crop, or just hit the RETURN key for Mac or ENTER key for Windows.

If you decide that you don’t want to apply the crop after all, press the ESCAPE key. The CROP MARQUEE will disappear. If you apply the crop and then decide you don’t like the results, select UNDO from the EDIT MENU or use the keyboard command shortcut, COMMAND Z (Mac) or CONTROL Z (Windows).

Often when you extend the CROP MARQUEE to close the the edge of the image, it snaps all the way to the image border. This can be very annoying. To stop this from happening, press COMMAND SHIFT (Mac) or CONTROL SHIFT (Windows) as you extend the marquee. You can also turn off SNAP TO DOCUMENT BOUNDS. To do this, go to the VIEW MENU, scroll down to SNAP TO and in the drop-down menu, select DOCUMENT BOUNDS (i.e. get rid of that checkmark next to it).

Cropping to Straighten a Crooked Image

1. Go to the FILE MENU and OPEN the image you want to work on. For this tip, we’ll fix this crooked horizon by cutting away some of the image using the CROP TOOL:

2. With the CROP TOOL selected, drag across your image and then release the mouse. Don’t worry about including the area you wish to crop inside the CROP SELECTION yet.

When you release the mouse, the CROP MARQUEE appears. Rotate the CROP MARQUEE by positioning the cursor outside the CROP SELECTION. The cursor will change into a curved arrow. Click, hold, and drag up or down to rotate. When trying to straighten an image, the best way is to first reduce the size of your CROP MARQUEE using the crop marquee handles, and then rotate the marquee so the top, horizontal border of the marquee is aligned with your horizon:

3. Using the CROP MARQUEE handles, extend the CROP MARQUEE so that it encompasses all of the area in the image you wish to keep. All of the area outside of the CROP MARQUEE will be cut away. Note that you will lose some physical image height and width:

4. To straighten and crop the image, double-click inside the CROP MARQUEE or just hit the RETURN key for Mac or ENTER key for Windows. You should now have an image with a straight horizon:

If you don’t like the way your crop turned out, just cancel the action by selecting UNDO from the EDIT MENU or use the keyboard command shortcut, COMMAND Z (Mac) or CONTROL Z (Windows).

For a PDF of this tutorial, click here.