Philip Wheeler Photography: Photoshop Basics: Cropping your Photos

Cropping is the process of reducing the area of the scene covered by your image. A DX format camera crops the scene when compared to a full frame camera. With Photoshop, you control additional cropping of your photo to achieve a desired result.

Open your photo in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Here is a horse named Dancer:

Locate the Crop tool in the toolbar.

Select the Crop tool. Four handles will appear, one on each side of your image. Click on one and drag it toward the center of the image. Use all the handles as needed until only the desired part of your image is showing. Another handle appears at each of the four corners of the image. You can use these too. Double-click on the image to complete the crop. Here is the cropped version of Dancer:

Cropping reduces the image area. At the same time, the image resolution is reduced because parts of the original photo have been discarded. This is why cameras with more megapixels are handy: an image can be cropped but still have enough resolution for your print or other purpose. If your original image has insufficient resolution, your cropped image could look as bad as the pixelated image of Dancer below: