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Crop or scale ??

macolganmacolgan Registered Users Posts: 12 Big grins
edited July 3, 2011 in Technique
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 ?

DSC0707-L.jpg
Regards..... mac.

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    pathfinderpathfinder Super Moderators Posts: 14,698 moderator
    edited July 2, 2011
    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
    Pathfinder - www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

    Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
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    basfltbasflt Registered Users Posts: 1,882 Major grins
    edited July 2, 2011
    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
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    macolganmacolgan Registered Users Posts: 12 Big grins
    edited July 3, 2011
    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.
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