Top of the crops

How to make the most of the powerful features lurking within this invaluable tool

Of all the edits you can make to an image in Photoshop, cropping could potentially be the most transformative. A tighter crop can elevate a photo to another level. It can help to remove distractions around the edges, create an unusual aspect ratio or lead to a stronger composition. Here, a cinematic aspect ratio of 16:9 lets us come in tighter to our subject, enhance the mood and remove extraneous details around the edges.

Cropping can also be functional. We might need to straighten a wonky horizon, correct sloppy framing or prepare an image for printing at a certain size. With so many uses – both creative and practical – it pays to know the ins and outs of the Crop tool. It may come as a surprise to learn that it can do a more than just cleave off parts of the photo.

Of course, the best time to crop is in-camera when framing the shot. But with handy visual aids like overlays, we might be able to improve the composition after the fact. There are also times when things happen too quickly for proper framing, or the lens doesn’t have the reach. At times like this, a good crop can make all the difference.

1 Crop tool basics

To crop edges, grab the Crop tool and drag the box inwards. Hover just outside the corner point to rotate the image, and hit X to switch between a horizontal or vertical orientation. Hold Shift to constrain the proportions as you drag in or out, or Alt to resize universally from the centre. To fix unwanted tilt, grab the straighten tool in the options and plot a line along a natural vertical or horizontal line in the scene.

2 Content -aware fill

This lets you add more pixels around the edges by cropping outside the bounds of the original image. It will employ Photoshop’s content-aware feature to generate new pixels based on the surrounding areas. It can be useful if you want to rotate a frame without losing pixels, or tweak the positioning of the subject to match up with compositional guides.

3 Composition guides

There are several compositional rules when composing in-camera or cropping. These state that when you position elements along certain lines or points, you can create a balanced frame. The most well-known is the rule of thirds, but others, like the golden spiral, can be useful. While cropping, hit O to cycle through the overlays, and press Shift+O to change the overlay’s orientation.

4 Extra crop tools

Cropping features can be found in several commands. If you have a bunch of scanned slides with messy edges, you can use File > Automate > Crop and straighten photos. Image > Trim can also be useful, as it lets you crop all areas that are the same as the bottom left or top right pixel colour. Image > Reveal All can also be helpful for cropping out to the entire original frame.

5 Delete or not?

This makes the crop tool non-destructive. Rather than erasing edges, it hides them. If you make a crop and decide to change it, click on the tool, and you’ll see the edges you removed earlier are still available. As such, it’s like making crops in Camera Raw or Lightroom. If you want to retain these hidden areas after closing the image, save the file as a Photoshop document (psd).

6 Prepare for print

The Crop tool is hugely useful for preparing images for print or resizing them for any other kind of output. Click the dropdown here and choose width, height and resolution. If you want to make an A4 print, you can simply set the width to 297mm, height to 210mm and resolution to 300 pixels per inch, then make your crop. If you use specific print sizes often then it’s worth saving the dimensions as a crop preset via the dropdown.