This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Cropping an image for print
The plan is to print the image at the standard US size of 11 by 8.5 inches, at 300 ppi. The aspect ratio (proportions) of the image are 3 : 2, used by many digital camera sensors but too wide for the proportions of the intended print size. You can use the Crop tool to quickly trim the image to the proportions and resolution it needs.
In the Tools panel, select the Crop tool (
). A crop rectangle appears.
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In the options bar, click the Select A Preset Aspect Ratio or Crop Size menu and choose the crop preset 8.5 x 11 in 300 ppi. This preset fills in the width, height, and resolution fields in the options bar. When you have crop requirements that aren’t available in a preset, you can enter values into those fields yourself.
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A crop shield now dims the area outside the crop handles; it helps more clearly indicate what areas will be trimmed. But there’s a problem: The crop rectangle is 8.5 : 11 (tall), but you need it to be 11 : 8.5 (wide). There’s a quick solution.
Press the X key. This keyboard shortcut swaps the width and height of the crop rectangle so that it’s now the 11 : 8.5 aspect ratio needed for the print.
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The default composition with the crop rectangle in the center works well enough, but if you want, you can adjust it. If you drag inside the crop rectangle, you can reposition the image with it, and you can drag any edge of the crop rectangle to change its size. When it looks right, you can apply the crop.
In the options bar, click the Commit Current Crop Operation icon (
) to trim off the areas outside the crop rectangle.
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The image is now cropped to print on 11.5 by 8 inch paper. Because a value was entered in the Resolution field, the image pixels were also resampled to 300 pixels per inch: The image that started out with 5760 × 3840 pixels became 3300 × 2550 pixels, because that equals 11.5 by 8 inches at 300 ppi. (If you want, you can verify this by choosing the command Image > Image Size.)
STRAIGHTENING AN IMAGE
When the Crop tool is selected, you can straighten an image in a single drag. Click the Straighten icon (
) to select it, which changes the pointer to a Straighten tool. Drag it along a line in the image that should be perfectly horizontal or vertical. The image is rotated by the correct angle, straightening the image.
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