Digital Darkroom Assignment #11

cletus

Your Assignment: Cropping

Cropping is a simple but powerful tool for editing images. For example, you can use cropping to

• Remove distracting features from an image
• Change the location of the subject relative to the image edges
• Remove tilt from an image

For this assignment, use the cropping tools of your image editing software to alter an image in a creative way. Be sure to post before and after images so we can see what you did! Feel free to post as many images as you like.

Hints

You can use the crop tool to make regular old rectangular crops:

You can make rotated rectangular crops:

Or you can make crops that change the perspective in an image:

Here is a link to a brief tutorial on the perspective adjusting crop.

dkapp

Great tutorial on the perspective cropping. I wish I would have known that 6 months ago! GREAT idea for a challenge. Cropping is something we all do, and it can make an OK image amazing.

I'll have to play w/ this when I get home from work.

Dave

wxwax

I crop so much that HCB refused to speak to me. But I haven't used the perspective adjustment tool.

cletus

Cropping without the crop tool!
Here's a trick for letting Photoshop figure out the tightest crop for a non-rectangular area:

Select the area you want to crop to (I used the magnetic laso, but you could use any selection tool):


Under the Image menu, select Crop, and bam - Photoshop crops down to the selected area:

hutchman

This picture was taken by a friend of mine on our recent MC trip down the continental divide.




I like the general picture but it needed some sky, so I added some



I still was not satisfied but. My eyes were drawn to the contrasty area of the trees. I wondered what this image would look like in black and white?



Better yet, but not there. Now for the crop.



I believe this is much better by taking away most of the foreground and background. It highlights the trees.

Hutch

hutchman

One more using the perspective tool for cropping and rotating the crop,





Then overcropping the upper corners of the picture, the trees become more vertical.



This one I think is the best. Whaddaya think?

Hutch

ginger_55

hutchman wrote:

One more using the perspective tool for cropping and rotating the crop,





Then overcropping the upper corners of the picture, the trees become more vertical.



This one I think is the best. Whaddaya think?

Hutch

Hutch, I love what you did. Not only a save, but a very good photograph.

I like the top one, here, best, but that might be because I saw it first. Really do like it. Is that tool you used, is it in PS 7 or in CS or both. I have 7

ginger

ginger_55

Nevermind, I tried it with my PS 7, I hadn't read all the way to the top, the instructions, printed them out, will show you all the results, they aren't perfect.

I have windows falling away that I don't want cropped, have to mess with this.

I agree it is an amazing wonderful tool. Thank you.

ginger

That is the original





This is cropped, and I tried to straighten it, not a keeper photo, but something to play with.




I can't even tell if it is better, but the potential is sure there, just need to find something to crop.

ginger_55

I can't do this one, this is the original




This is the attempt to straighten it


I think I made the original worse??

ginger, any suggestions.

wxwax

hutchman wrote:

This one I think is the best. Whaddaya think?

Hutch

Hmmm, hard to say. I see why you prefer the last one. I kinda like the greater gap-iness of the first one. But the trees aren't straight. Didja try the transform tool? It's an excellent shot.

pathfinder

ginger_55 wrote:

I can't do this one, this is the original




This is the attempt to straighten it


I think I made the original worse??

ginger, any suggestions.

Ginger - the crop tool with the perspective box checked, lets you do some really cool things - like square up a window shot askew or a painting - Your image is not real sharp at the top,but this will give you and example of what you can do with the crop tool with the perspective box checked.

hutchman

wxwax wrote:

Hmmm, hard to say. I see why you prefer the last one. I kinda like the greater gap-iness of the first one. But the trees aren't straight. Didja try the transform tool? It's an excellent shot.

I did not use the transform tool for this one. This was a crop assignment so I tried to use the features of the crop tool. Normally I do use the transform tool to straighten images and usually like the results.

Hutch

hutchman

ginger_55 wrote:

Hutch, I love what you did. Not only a save, but a very good photograph.

I like the top one, here, best, but that might be because I saw it first. Really do like it. Is that tool you used, is it in PS 7 or in CS or both. I have 7

ginger

I use 7 and hope to have CS in the near future.

Hutch

ginger_55

pathfinder wrote:

Ginger - the crop tool with the perspective box checked, lets you do some really cool things - like square up a window shot askew or a painting - Your image is not real sharp at the top,but this will give you and example of what you can do with the crop tool with the perspective box checked.

Pathfinder, it was checked. Maybe I have no imagination, but I was just lost as to how to do anything really helpful. You got it spot on.

Thanks for showing me that it can be done.

g