In the spotlight today is the Crop Tool, which is found in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. It is important for those interested in digital scrapbooking or photo editing to become familiar with the tools in the most popular graphic programs (Photoshop and Photoshop Elements).
The Crop Tool works basically the same in both Photoshop or Photoshop Elements so as you look at the examples below they will apply to either program.
What is the Crop Tool? The Basics:
The Crop Tool is used to quickly change the size of and image and remove unneeded space on the top or sides of an image. Cropping is also a great way to remove unwanted areas of an image or unnecessary background.
If you want to crop an image, then your best choice is to use the Crop Tool! Just click on it (see #1), then click on a starting point of your image, drag with your mouse, and it will make a selection (see #2).
What is inside the area that you selected will remain after the crop. Remember, you are selecting what ever you want to keep. The rest of the image darkens, indicating that it will be removed and deleted.
Then press the Enter/Return key and it will crop your image (or click on the check or cancel icon – see 3 below).
An Important Tip when using the Crop Tool:
You can resize your selection by placing your mouse on an edge of the selection made by the crop tool (see # 1 in next image).You will see a double arrow. Click and drag and it will resize your selection. ALT/OPTION drag it and it will constrain the proportions of your selection.
You can change the position of your selection by placing your mouse in the middle of the selection and dragging.
You can rotate the selection my putting your mouse on the corners of your selection until you see a curved arrow. Then click and move your mouse in a circular direction and it will rotate your selection. Press Enter and it will crop (or click on the check or cancel icon).
See the example of these concepts in Photoshop Elements:
Following the instructions above, Photoshop Elements works exactly the same way: Click on the crop tool (see # 1 in example above) and then draw out the selection (see #2).Then you can bring in the areas to be cropped or rotate just like in the Photoshop examples above.
Press the Enter/Return key and it will crop your image (or click on the check or cancel icon – see 3 in left/below image).
Now you are ready to use the Crop Tool!
These are some of the basics about the Crop Tool that every new digital scrapper or photo editor needs to know if they want to use Crop Tool within Photoshop or Photoshop Elements!
The Crop Tool is good to use to make photos look better, for example, it helps focus in on the subject in a picture. The Crop Tool is also great to use on photos so they fit better within digital scrapbooking frames. There are many reasons as to why you should crop some of your photos or images, and once you give this tool a try, you won’t know how you lived without!
Advanced Features of the Crop Tool:
One thing that you can do when using the Crop Tool, is preset the crop dimensions before cropping a photo or image by hand. Once the crop tool is selected, a top menu with more items appear to select additional crop options becomes available.
For example, you can set the height, width, and and resolution of the the crop before you begin cropping! In the image below, I set the width to 1 inch and the height to 4 inches. What this does is for every 1 inch of the width, it will also crop 3 inches of height! So, you can see dotted line were the photo will be cropped. I set it at rather dramatic settings to show how this worked, but this feature is very nice if you need the photo to be “cut” at a certain measurement!
In the image below, you’ll notice that Photoshop Elements also has this same feature, but also includes an additional drop down menu with specific dimension pre-settings too!
This is a fun feature and once you give it a try, I am sure that you will think of ways to use this in some of your photo editing projects. You may even find yourself using these crop techniques when cropping digital scrapbooking supplies like digital paper to make photo mats for pictures… which is yet another reason why the dimension settings in the drop down menu might be nice, especially instead of having to take a wild guess when cropping by hand!
Photoshop has a couple of extra features in the Crop Tool that Elements doesn’t have:
Within Photoshop, the top menu of the Crop Tool Bar has the some extra features. Some of those features are the Front Image Button and Clear Button. To use the Front Image button, click on an image that has the dimensions that you want your new crop to be, then “draw out” a crop area on your other image, and the settings will be the same! This is a great feature, especially if you are not sure what the exact settings are, but want both images to have the same dimensions! The clear button is pretty obvious: it simply clears away the old settings/dimensions and starts fresh again!
Photoshop also has a couple of hidden extra tools that lay underneath the Crop 
Tool in the Tool Area. If you click on the crop tool and hold down for second, these extra Crop Tool options will appear: The Slice Tool and the Slice Select Tool.
The Slice Tool lets you cut a picture up into smaller sections, for specific web design features. In the image below, you can see how when using the slice tool to crop areas of the photo, you draw out how you want it to be cut up. This image will be cut in to smaller pieces to be re-assembled later on in a Web Page. The other tool under the Crop tool menu, the Slice Select Tool, helps select these slices of the image, and allows you to move them around and reposition the slices.
You might only use these special crop tool functions if you are designing Web Pages, but if you ever need this feature it is nice to know that Photoshop has it!
I actually went for years using other graphics programs because I didn’t know Photoshop could do this! I was very happy when I learned about this feature, and now I can keep more of my graphics in just one program- instead switching back an forth to several different programs at a time!
The Crop Tool is an important tool to learn about if you are interested in using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for either digital scrapbooking or photo editing! So open up your program, bring in a few images, and start trying all the fun ways you can crop your images!
Enjoy!
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If you want to learn more about Digital Scrapbooking or Photo Editing please check out our Scrap Shop for great video tutorials!
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