In this video, I'm going to show you how to crop your photos in a circle in Photoshop.
Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel, I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this Photoshop tutorial, I'm going to show you the proper steps to crop a photo into
a circle, it's not as obvious as it may seem.
Let's just get right to it.
I want to start out by saying that, unfortunately, you cannot crop in a circle in Photoshop.
But, that doesn't mean that we can't get the same result.
So, let me show you, at least, one method that'll get you the result that you want.
And we're going to use a new tool in Photoshop.
This tool is a little bit over a year old and this tool is called the Frame Tool, right here.
And the Frame Tool allows you to create placeholder frames for images.
And there's two options, you can see them here in the Options bar.
We have a rectangular frame, and a elliptical frame.
In other words, you can create a circle.
And when you hover over an image and you click-and-drag you're going to place the photo, that you're
clicking and dragging on, into that frame.
So, if I click-and-drag you'll notice that I'm not really getting a circle, even though
I have the elliptical option selected.
When I release you'll notice that Photoshop will, in fact, create a circle around the
area that I selected.
I'm going to undo that by pressing Ctrl + Z on Windows, Command + Z on the Mac because
I didn't keep my frame constrained, so it wasn't a perfect circle.
If you want a perfect circle you can hold Shift and click-and-drag and you'll see a
perfect square, but the circle will be created within that square and it will be a perfect circle.
And, actually, depending on your options and settings holding Shift may not constrain the
transformation.
So, if you click-and-drag and you don't get a perfect square, then hold Shift to keep
the transformation constrained.
So, I'm just going to click-and-drag, and just make a bigger square.
As I'm clicking and dragging you can hold the space bar to move the frame as you create it.
And I'm just going to fill in this area right about here.
And that creates a circle, and it places my model into that frame.
Also, very important to note, this became a smart object.
That means that I can double-click on that layer, and Photoshop will open a new tab that
contains that document.
So, I can make changes.
For example, I can make this into a black and white image by selecting the black and
white adjustment layer.
The image becomes black and white, and I can use these sliders to control the original
colors of the image.
For example, the model's wearing a red top, so I can use the reds slider to adjust the
luminosity of the reds.
And here's a pro tip for you, if you click on the drop down on the blending mode drop
down, you'll see the different blending modes.
If you select luminosity the color comes back and, now, I can use these sliders to control
the luminosity of those colors.
For example, with reds I can now control how dark those reds appear.
So, this is a cool tip that will give you that extra control with the luminosity of
the colors in your photo.
I'm going to change the blending mode back to normal.
And I'm just going to press Ctrl + S, Command + S on the Mac to save.
And I can back into my working document and you can see, now, that those changes were
applied to this image.
And that's because we were working with a smart object.
A smart object is sort of a container that allows you to make adjustments without permanently
affecting the image.
So, once again, I'm going to save the image, now that I've disabled the black and white
adjustment layer, so that we can back our original image.
Next, I'm going to show you how to actually crop the image, so that it crops right to
the edges of this frame.
To do so, you can hold Ctrl on windows, Command on the Mac, and click on the Frame Tool thumbnail
and that will make a selection around the frame.
Then, I can select the Crop Tool from the toolbar.
And notice that immediately Photoshop will crop the image to the selection and I can
tap Enter on Windows twice, or Return on the Mac twice to commit those changes.
I'm going to double tap on the Hand Tool to fit the image to screen.
And you can see, now, that the image is now inside of that circle, and there's transparency
right outside of that, that's what the checkerboard represents.
Also, notice that I have this white outline around the smart object, that means that that
smart object is active.
The focus is on the smart object, so I can adjust it with the Move Tool, so I'll select
the Move Tool and I can click-and-drag to reposition her within that circle.
At this point, you could also edit the smart object one more time if you want to, you can
double-click on the smart object thumbnail to open it up in a new tab.
Then, enable the black and white adjustment layer, press Ctrl + S on Windows, Command
+ S on the Mac to save, and go back into your working document, you'll see the black and
white image.
Again, smart objects are always editable, and this is why you should always work with them.
The next step is to save this image in a format that can save transparency, so that we can
create that circle cropped effect.
To save this image go into File, Export, Export As.
And, in this case, we don't want to use a JPEG because Photoshop will always export a square.
And anything that is transparent with a JPEG will become white, and that won't give us
the effect that we're going for.
We want to make it seem as if we have a "circle" crop.
So, to achieve that effect we need transparency.
So, we need to use a file format that uses transparency.
And a file format to do that will be PNG, since you can keep the transparency by checking
this checkbox, you can see the checkerboard in the background, and that gives you the
circle crop effect that you're looking for.
Now, all you have to do is hit the Export button, so that you can save the file into
your computer.
Once you have your PNG image, you can take it to any website or application that supports
transparency and you will see that the image will look like as if it were cropped in a circle.
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Thank you so much for watching.
I will talk to you again in the next Photoshop tutorial.