Cropping in images - Quick Question

[nexpos]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new here, although I've been following the site and hitting "the mounds" on and off the past few years. Question for you - how often do you crop your images? If so, how much do you crop? I've never really cropped before as I haven't truly learned the art of cropping with a fixed ratio to keep a photo printable - but wanted to pick your brains on how you handle cropping - say in CS5?

Thanks for your help,
James

[Roush6NY]

James, Welcome !

Well, I am sure everyone has their own taste, me personally like my photos on a very tight crop so I pretty much crop all my photos. If you like, post a couple a your pics here and we will all be able to give you a taste of what we think

Regards

Kaz

[steve1840]

Also, if you're planning on uploading your photos to any of the major databases online, the images will need to be centered in the crop as well. Most of us crop to either a 3x2 or 4x3 ratio. These are also the only accepted ratios on the databases. At least as far as I know.

As far as wanting printable cropped photos: the 3x2 crop ratio is the same as a 4x6 photo. Me personally, if I am going to print and frame my photos, I generally do a seperate edit and crop to 8x10 for those purposes.

[Zee71]

Ditto on Steve's comments............I usually crop mine to 3x2 ratio.............otherwise, if I decide to print something then my crop size is different. I try to keep my crops tight in order to remove the extra dead space an image may have. Here's an example:

Lots of dead space behind and in front of the aircraft


A little less dead space (a little bit more appealing)....actually after looking at this image I think I could have made the image a tighter)

[jerslice]

Unless using the rule of thirds I'd also do the close crop / centered thing. Though I'd recommend using the rule of thirds and getting creative!

[gonzalu]

I put together a quick tutorial...



P.S. It is recorded in Full HD so view it full screen and select 1080p

[JDANDO]

Don't forget that if you are printing for framing you will "loose" a bit of the image under the frame. I tend crop similar to the second image in Mark's (Zee71) post or wing tips might get lost under the frame :(

[moose135]

Though I'd recommend using the rule of thirds and getting creative!

You're not starting that again, are you, Jeremy?

[nexpos]

I put together a quick tutorial...



P.S. It is recorded in Full HD so view it full screen and select 1080p

Wow, thank you so much! Will definitely check this out (can't load YouTube at work unfortunately).

[nexpos]

Thanks for your tips everyone. Really appreciate it!

[threeholerglory]

found this aspect ratio calculator to be very helpful...

http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/aspect_ratio/

[Derf]

I did a quick reprocessing video for another person not on the forum but also included cropping for display in this thread. Why make 2 videos right?

Video
Part 1

Part 2

hope this helps