Hello! It’s Cherise again, here to show you a little more photoshop magic. Today’s lesson is going to be how to use the crop tool, which is a fairly easy lesson.
Typically I prefer to leave images in their full form and not crop, but we all know that clients don’t always care for sizes that are 8×12 or 16×24, sometimes they really want that 8×10 or 16×20 so it’s important to know how to crop to show them what will get cut out of their images, or just as a fast way to get rid of background distractions.
Today I am going to use an adorable animal picture, because I loved my guinea pigs, this guinea pigs name was Cupine (Family Feud reference, 100 points to you if you got it!)
Alright, so the first thing you’re going to need to know is what the crop tool looks like and where to locate it. As you can see in this image, it’s on the left hand side and looks like a little dotted box. Click on that.
There are three different modes of cropping.
1.) Normal: There are no restrictions on size, it crops to however you feel like cropping the image. This method isn’t recommended unless you are only posting online and won’t be printing the images. I only use the “Normal” ratio when I am showing a specific portion of an image. Such as this one. I only want you to see what I am pointing out, so I used the “normal” crop so that you aren’t looking all over the place.
2.) Fixed Ratio: This is what you’ll be using 95% of the time. This is what you want to use. It is a ratio, meaning if you crop at 8×10 it will also work if you print it at 16×20, 24×30 etc. It keeps the image true to size, full resolution.
3.) Fixed Size: I have honestly never used this crop method. If you say you want a 4×6, a box will pop up that gives you exactly 4×6 and nothing more, nothing less. You won’t be able to print this any larger than the crop, I don’t personally see a point in using this method for photography, but maybe you’ll find a reason to use it.
Okay, now that you know the three different types, I am going to go back to the second method; Fixed Ratio. This is what you’ll be using a majority of the time, so I wanted to show you exactly how to use it.
This is where you’ll enter in the crop ratio you’d like, you can enter any two numbers into these two boxes. For this example I used 5×7, which is a typical card crop.
You can see how it highlights what is going to be cropped.
Then, to crop the image you want to go up to “Image” then click “Crop”
Tada! Your picture is now cropped.
Let’s say, you decide that’s not the crop that you want, you would click on, “Edit” > “Step Backward” twice to go back to the original image size.
Let’s say you wanted it to be a 7×5 instead of a 5×7, the easiest way to flip the ratios is to click the double reverse arrow in the center of the ratios, it will flip it around and you’ll have the opposite crop ratio.
There you have it! Now you know how to crop your images, pretty easy right?
If you have any questions leave a comment below!
Other Basic Photoshop Courses:
Lesson 1: Basic Color Adjusments 101
Lesson 2: Basic Color Adjusments 102
Lesson 3: How to use the Crop Tool in Photoshop
Lesson 4: How to Use Levels for a Color Scheme in Photoshop
Lesson 5: How to Whiten Teeth in Photoshop
Lesson 6: How to use the Spot Healing Brush
Lesson 7: How to do a Head Swap in Photoshop
My name is Cherise and I am a photoshop expert, I come across many people who are baffled by photoshop. They think that what I do is some sort of magic, that they send me a picture I go abracadabra and poof amazing images. But the truth is, I have spent many many hours learning to do what I do, perfecting it and crying tears of frustration.
I am a self taught editor, mostly trial and error and lots and lots of practice.
I want to make the editing process easier for you and teach you how simple it really is, so that you don’t have to cry tears of frustration to perfect your images.
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