Your cropping technique?

Mark Edell · September 13, 2008

I was just wondering about the formula (if there is one) that everyone uses to crop their photos. Up to now, I have just been using the rectangular marquee tool and selecting a portion of a shot that looks astatically pleasing and cropping it. But this does not always work well with prints. Does anyone use a strict formula on their shots when cropping or do you just freehand it like I do? :dunno

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Thanks!

LiquidAir · September 13, 2008

I usually us the marquis or crop tool set to a fixed aspect ratio. Most are cropped to 2x3, 4x5 or square, but sometimes I'll crop 4x3, 16x9, 16x10, 10x4, 5x7 or 2x1.

kpoore · September 13, 2008

Cropping for matting?
This subject concerns me too.
When you crop in the Smug Mug process is there an automatic border applied to the print?
When I size/print at home I always add a quarter inch border of white canvas which allows me to keep the whole image and it fits in a mat.
e.g. an 8x10 mat standard has a opening of 7.5x9.5 so I size my image to 7.5x9.5 with a quarter inch canvas border making the photo size 8x10.
So if I submit this 8x10 will Smug Mug add a border of their own?

Thanks,
Karen

LiquidAir wrote:

I usually us the marquis or crop tool set to a fixed aspect ratio. Most are cropped to 2x3, 4x5 or square, but sometimes I'll crop 4x3, 16x9, 16x10, 10x4, 5x7 or 2x1.

digismile · September 13, 2008

Usually when I first look at a photo, I have a sense of how I would crop it and from that impression, I use the closest ratio between 4x5, 5x7, 2x3. That way I know that it will fit at least one print size.

As well, I always do my cropping in RAW. That way, I still have all the original detail should I ever change my mind.

J-N Design · September 13, 2008

I prefer to crop my photos myself before uploading. I crop to the aspect ratio of my desired print (usually 8x10). I use lightroom which gives me a choice of guidelines (thirds, golden rectangle, golden spiral, and grid) that i use to help line things up. It's easy to switch between the guides and I don't always use them. Most of the time I try out several versions before I'm happy. The joy of LR is I can always go back and re-crop to something else.

Ric Grupe · September 15, 2008

Cropping for paper size certainly has it's merits...but quite often doing it that way does not offer the best crop compositionally. Nothing wrong with a border (some prefer it) on a print.

When cropping strictly for composition, don't forget that most crops in most image editors can be rotated. Sometimes even the slightest rotation can do wonders for an image.

BinaryFx · September 16, 2008

While on the general topic of "artistic" or "photographic output" cropping, here are some Rule of Thirds and Golden Ratio cropping actions:

http://www.shutterfreaks.com/Actions/RuleOfThirds.php#Download

http://www.panosfx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=183&Itemid=27

http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm
http://www.atncentral.com/Zip_Actions/RoTs.zip

Regards,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Your cropping technique?

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