Crop or scale ??

macolgan

Hi everyone. First post here on Dgrin, so hope you guys can help !

When (if at all ) is it better to scale a photo than to simply crop it.

One example I have is this one, where I would normally crop out as much of the distractions as possible, but would scaling make a better job, or am I getting the wrong idea behind scaling ?


Regards..... mac.

pathfinder

What is the goal for this image? Print or web based image, as say an avatar?

For a print I think cropping as needed is more appropriate if you have sufficient pixels for the print image. Otherwise it will need uprezzing in Photoshop or Genuine Fractals ( which is now called PerfertResize 7 for some bizarre reason )

As I understand scaling, is it used to fit a given image - say 100pixels by 150 pixels - to a different size on a web display on a computer monitor as seen in this tutorial =-- http://haslayout.net/css-tuts/CSS-Proportional-Image-Scale and this one -- http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tutorial-quickie-scale.html

basflt

macolgan wrote: »

, or am I getting the wrong idea behind scaling ?

you got the wrong idea
it wont help for removing distractions
cropping can be used - sparingly - for composition sake , but it still wont remove distractions
upscaling is never a good idea , downscaling is , but it still wont remove distractions

if you find background irritating , better blur it out , one way or other ,
there are several ways to do that

macolgan

Thanks for your replies. The photo ( as pretty much all of my photos ) will be, for the moment anyway, to keep at good sizes for those viewing my galleries. In other words, I don't wish to reduce them to avatar or any other small size.
So, cropping is the way to go still ! Blurring sound an interesting action to use for some photos at least.

I'll have a look into this feature to see how it works out .

Thanks you both once again for your advice.

Regards.... mac.