Cropping and Resizing

Codogg

I'm very new to photography and I'm trying to find an easy to understand lesson on cropping and resizing. What's the best way to trim a photo without making it blurry? I've played around with the different cropping options (4x6, 5x7, free form, etc...) and I've also played with the resizing tool, but I'm not sure the proper way to resize or crop a photo. :dunno

Thanks,
Cody <><

Codogg

Codogg wrote:

I'm very new to photography and I'm trying to find an easy to understand lesson on cropping and resizing. What's the best way to trim a photo without making it blurry? I've played around with the different cropping options (4x6, 5x7, free form, etc...) and I've also played with the resizing tool, but I'm not sure the proper way to resize or crop a photo. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Thanks,
Cody <><

Also, if I shoot in RAW at 10megapixels, what should I set my output dpi at?

nmh

Codogg wrote:

I'm very new to photography and I'm trying to find an easy to understand lesson on cropping and resizing. What's the best way to trim a photo without making it blurry? I've played around with the different cropping options (4x6, 5x7, free form, etc...) and I've also played with the resizing tool, but I'm not sure the proper way to resize or crop a photo.

You may want to expand on what you mean by "making it blurry". When I want to crop a photo, I usually use a set aspect ratio or pixel dimension - this is easy to do in GIMP. If you set an aspect ratio, crop out the bits you don't want and the image is too large, then you can easily resize the entire thing while retaining the aspect ratio.

I don't bother with setting dpi - maybe someone else can explain the benefits of that.

Codogg

nmh wrote:

You may want to expand on what you mean by "making it blurry". When I want to crop a photo, I usually use a set aspect ratio or pixel dimension - this is easy to do in GIMP. If you set an aspect ratio, crop out the bits you don't want and the image is too large, then you can easily resize the entire thing while retaining the aspect ratio.

I don't bother with setting dpi - maybe someone else can explain the benefits of that.

Thank you very much. I think aspect ratio is what has me a bit confused. Can you explain aspect ratio?

joshhuntnm

it is the ratio of the height and weigth.

different size photos have different ratios. 4X6 is wider vss 8 X 10 is much closer to square. I use photoshop elements and you can prescribe what you want the aspect ratio to be. If you crop to an 8X10 you may have to cut off some top or bottom if you print to 4X6. Bottom line: figure out what you are printing to before you crop.

As for sharpening, I find that most pics can use a little sharpening, at least for my taste. I default to somewhere between 1 and 2 pixels at around 100%.

claudermilk

Cropping in itself shouldn't make the image blurry. Something else is happening here.

As for detting dpi, there is no benefit. IMHO it's a useless bit of data that only serves to confuse newbies. Your pixel density is only determined at the time you sned the image data to a physical representation. A 2000 pixel-wide image printed to 10" wide will be 200ppi, while at 20" it's 100ppi. Doesn't matter what number you save in that field, you only have x number of pixels to spread across y inches of space. I would suggest doing like I do & ignore that setting. Only worry about pixel density when you start getting a small file or a large print & the end density starts getting low.