Photoshop Cropping Images

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Cropping Images In Photoshop
Manipulating backgrounds
Touching up an Image
 

Cropping Images in Photoshop

This tutorial will show how to crop Images in Photoshop to get rid of pesky background details, such as cars, bins etc., and also how to manipulate the Image to achieve a smooth surface or hide blemishes in concrete, walls or the like.

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Tutorial 1: Cropping Images

The Crop tool can be found in the main tool menu bar and looks like this:



This Tool is easy to use but very handy, just select and draw a marquee around the part of the image you wish to keep. In the image shown below, we want to take off the people, building, ladders and excess pavement in the foreground. The main focus is the Banner, which is getting lost in its surroundings at the moment.

There are several standard options to choose from in the Crop tool, however they are found in a drop down menu at the top of the screen (once the Crop tool is selected), not via arrow on the actual tool.

The standard options are sizes from 4 x 6 inch at 300 dpi to 8 x 10 inch at 300 dpi.
What this means is that if you choose the 4 x 6 inch at 300 dpi, the tool will automatically crop to these requirements. This allows you to control the final size easily.
You can also create a new tool preset if you have a recurring size, choose 'create new tool preset' on the right of the preset buttons.

Or, if you have a one-off size requirement to be cropped, type in manually at the top of the toolbar - width, height, resolution, then press enter and crop.

TIP: If you're finding that your lose too much of the image once you preset the crop size, you might need to make your image size smaller in the original file before cropping.

Let's go through the steps using the above Image as an example:

Step1. Open File

Step 2. Select Crop tool. With this image, we are using the Crop tool freehand, without presetting the crop size. Drag the Crop tool over the image, it will show the selected area, the rest of the image will be dark - the dark area will then be discarded!

Step 3. Happy with the selection? Choose 'crop'. If you are not happy with the area and would like to reselect, just choose 'cancel' and you can adjust the size individually. If you choose 'don't crop', it will revert to the original image with nothing changed.

Tutorial 2: Manipulating backgrounds

Fixing up the background is the second step after the crop tool. This can be done using various tools, the most popular amongst these being the Clone Tool, the Spot Healing Brush, or even the Blend Tool.

See our Tutorials on these tools

Other pages helpful to this tutorial

Clone Tool | Adjusting Images | Cropping Images to specific size

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