Cropping Photos: Free Photoshop Tutorial

Topics covered in this Photoshop tutorial:

Cropping Photos, Straightening Photos, Straightening a Layer

Exercise Preview

Photo Copyright © Dan Rodney, danrodney.com

Exercise Overview

In this exercise you’ll learn how to crop and straighten photos.

1. In Photoshop, go to File > Open.
2. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Photoshop Class and double–click on 1C Landscape to crop.jpg to open it.
3. In the Tools panel, click on the Crop tool .

4. In the Options bar at the top of the screen:

   • Make sure Delete Cropped Pixels is checked on.
   • Make sure Content-Aware is unchecked.
5. Pull in the top left crop handle to crop off some of the sky.
6. Hit Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to accept the crop.
7. In the Tools panel, click on the Crop tool again to show the crop handles.
8. Drag the top left crop handle outward and release it.
9. You should see some solid colored area around the photo (probably white), which shows us that the crop we did was destructive. That means it permanently deleted the cropped off parts of the photo. Let’s see a way to do this non-destructively.
10. Hit the Esc key to cancel the crop.

11. Go to File > Revert.

Cropping Non-Destructively

1. With the Crop tool still selected, in the Options bar at the top of the screen, uncheck Delete Cropped Pixels.
2. In the Tools panel, click on the Crop tool .
3. Pull in the top left crop handle to crop off some of the sky.
4. Double–click inside the crop area to accept the cropping.
5. Choose the Move tool .
6. Drag on the image to see that the cropped off parts are still there, just hidden outside the document!

Cropping to a Specific Aspect Ratio

Let’s see how to crop to an aspect ratio such as 4x5 or 1x1 (square).

1. Go to File > Revert.
2. In the Tools panel, click on the Crop tool .
3. In the Options bar, click on the Ratio menu and choose 1:1 (Square).
4. Drag the crop handles to adjust the crop.
5. Drag anywhere inside the crop zone to choose a different area.
6. Double–click inside the crop area to accept the cropping.
7. In the Options bar, click the Clear button to remove the aspect ratio for the next time you’ll use the Crop tool.

Straightening a Photo

This photo was taken quickly out the window of a car so there wasn’t enough time to get it straight in camera, but we can fix that.

1. Go to File > Revert.
2. Choose View > Fit on Screen.
3. In the Tools panel, click on the Crop tool .
4. In the Options bar at the top of the screen, click on the Straighten icon .

5. We need to find a line that should be perfectly vertical or horizontal. The horizon line where the mountains meet the ground will work perfectly. On the horizon line, drag from one side of the photo to the other.

   When you release, Photoshop will straight the photo!

6. Do not accept the crop yet! Choose View > Fit on Screen.

7. Notice in the areas outside the crop:

   • Some parts of the photo will be cropped out
   • There are some part of white and gray checkerboard, which indicates a transparent area (where there is no photo).
8. In the Options bar, check on Content-Aware.
9. We do no want to crop in on the photo making it smaller, so pull the crop handles out to show all of the original photo.
10. Double–click anywhere inside the crop area to accept the crop.

11. It might take a moment as Photoshop figures out what to put into the transparent areas, but after it’s done you should have a straight image.

    Notice that Photoshop filled in the empty spaces, so our image is actually bigger than what we started with!

    NOTE: Content-Aware is not always perfect. It works very well for this photo, but be sure to always check the edges and look for issues. For example, in this photo the horizon line on the left is not perfect.

Straightening a Layer

1. Go to File > Revert.
2. In the Tools panel, choose the Horizontal Type tool .
3. Click anywhere on the image to make some type.
4. With the text still selected, in the Options bar change the text size to be 150 pt so you can see it.
5. We don’t care what the type looks like, we just wanted another layer.
6. We want to straighten the photo, but if we used the Crop tool it would rotate the whole file, including the type.
7. In the Layers panel, select the Background layer.
8. In the Tools panel, click and hold on the Eyedropper tool and choose the Ruler tool .
9. On the horizon line, drag from one side of the photo to the other.
10. In the Options bar, notice that Straighten Layer is grayed out. That’s because this is a Background layer, and not a regular layer.
11. In the Layers panel, to the right of the Background layer click the Lock icon .
12. In the Options bar, now click the Straighten Layer button.
13. We don’t need to save this image, so you can close it without saving changes.