We often have students ask us something like “How come my photos don’t look as good as the ones I see in the magazines?” Setting equipment, talent, and training aside for a moment, you can dramatically increase the impact of your photo simply by cropping it. Photoshop’s cropping tool is very easy to use. We have a recent photo we can use as an example.
Well, we’re all smiles, but what’s going on elsewhere in the photo?! For example, salt and pepper shakers have sneaked into the foreground and need to go. The guy on the left looks like he’s trying to take a bite out of Kris’ arm, and we won’t even get into what the guy on the right seems to be staring at! Yes, we could spend hours erasing them from the photo, but the quick and often best solution is to crop.
Open your image in Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) and select the crop tool, shown here on the right. Click and drag the cursor in a diagonal direction and you’ll see how the image will be cropped. Don’t worry about letting go. You can click and pull any of the small squares on the bounding box to change the width and length. Click inside the bounding box to move the box around.
Want to start out with a definite size for your cropped photo? With the crop tool selected, go to the Options bar (pictured below) and enter the dimensions you want. Photoshop will do the rest!
So here we are with fewer distractions. Now we might look and see about getting rid of that little devil sitting on Jeanne’s shoulders, but that’s another lesson!
P.S. The photo is of us and Jeanne Marklin, our good friend and fellow artist from Massachusetts. We went to the De Young Museum in San Francisco last week to see the exhibit called David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition, which runs through January 20, 2014. (Another Tech Tuesday post?) You don’t want to miss it!