Let's take a look at how to crop and resize images in Photoshop CC
I have my artwork open here. And I'm going to go to the crop tool
which is right here and click on it.
You can crop in two ways...
one is you can draw a box for your crop using the crop tool
I'll cancel this crop by clicking on undo
Or you can just start dragging the corner
of these corner points here to create your crop
you can drag the image around to reposition it within the crop
and if you want a specific crop size, which you probably are going to want most of the time
you'll want to change this setting from Ratio to Width x Height x Resolution
And for the width, let's say we want 10 inches
I'll type "10 IN" and hit the Enter key
And then type "8 IN" and then hit the Enter key
And we'll choose 300 dpi/ppi for the resolution
So now we have a crop that is 10 inches by 8 inches which is a standard frame size
Now let's move our image so it fills that space
these lines that you see here are known as the "Rule Of Thirds Grid"
these help you compose the piece. You can put areas of interest within the squares,
or along these lines or at the intersecting points where these lines intersect each other
For instance, I will frame the head in this square, the body in this square, and so on
When you're ready to go ahead and crop, click on the check box
and that will crop the image. If you're not happy with that crop, you can use CTRL+Z
to do an Undo and you can start over with a different crop
Now once you have this set to 8x10, it is always going to stay locked in av 8x10 ratio.
So if you want to unlock it, you have to go ahead and click the clear button
and that will clear the settings and put it back to its default
The reason for cropping to 8x10 is because you may want to print this
on an 8x10 piece of paper and put it in an 8x10 inch frame
If you want to print it for a different frame size, you would want to crop your image to that particular frame size
So generally speaking, you don't want to just crop things visually
you want to crop at a specific frame size or a specific print size
There's an option here for Delete Cropped Pixels if you just want to erase all of this cropped area.
If you're not worried about saving it, go ahead and leave Delete Cropped Pixels checked.
However, if you're not sure that you want to throw away the background yet
or if you may want to change this crop, go ahead and uncheck Delete Cropped Pixels
That will crop the image, but all of that cropped area will still actually be recoverable
So if you want to go back and change your crop again
like so
you have access to that full area again
Now what if you want to straighten an image while you crop it?
What you'll want to do is select the Crop Tool, click on the Straighten icon here
and then drag a line along your horizon
you can also do this along a vertical line
And that will automatically straighten your image and bring up a crop box
And then you can go ahead and adjust the crop.
So that's cropping. But what if you want to resize an image manually?
Go to Image > Image Size
This is going to show you a preview of the image
and you can make the image larger or smaller.
Currently, I'm measuring the image in pixels
so if I want to, I can change this from pixels to inches
So let's say I want to make the image smaller. Let's change the height to 4 and see what happens
Now it's going to make sure that this is four inches
and that the image stays in proportion because I have this lock enabled
if I uncheck this lock, I can change the proportion
and then change the image to 4x6.
You can see that's gonna squish the image when I do that
So what you would want to do is go back and crop it to 4x6 not resize it to 4x6
Most of the time you won't want to stretch the image, so you'll want to keep this lock enabled
So let's say 4x5
We can also change the resolution. If we're going to put this on the web,
you wouldn't want the resolution to be so high.
You would want a resolution to be 72 for the web. For printing, we want to print at 300
Let's go ahead and look at the re-sampling options here.
If you're making the image smaller, you'll want change it to Reduction.
If you're making the image bigger, you want to change it to Enlargement
Most the time you should avoid enlarging images because it can make the image blurry and blocky
If you do enlarge, make sure you choose Preserve Details
And you can choose to reduce the Noise a little bit which will make it a little less blocky
I will go ahead and choose Reduction since I'm making the image smaller
and click OK
And now we've shrunk the image down a bit
Now what if we want to make the canvas bigger without resizing the image?
Let's click on Image > Canvas Size
And if you choose an origin point, it's going to expand the canvas from that location.
Center, top, bottom and so on. Let's choose from the center
Let's expand the canvas. Let's make it 10 inches wide by 8 inches tall
Click OK
Now if we zoom out, you can see that we've expanded the canvas without enlarging the image
Now let's take a look at one more way to crop
We can also crop with a mask
So let's say we're going to make a custom crop here
I'm going to use the Polygonal Lasso Tool
Next, I'm going to cut out a shape around the area I want to cut out
And then I will create a layer mask by clicking on the layer mask icon
What that does is that creates a nice custom crop around the image
And then since this is a mask,
we can always just delete that layer mask if we don't want to keep that crop
Now when you create a layer mask, you're going to be in Mask Mode until you exit out of it
So to exit out of mask mode, you click to the left onto little thumbnail for your layer
And then you can go ahead and continue working in Photoshop as you would normally
If you want to work on the mask again you have to click back on the mask
Let's take a look at how to resize the image a little bit.
If you press the Control+T on your keyboard,
or you go to Edit > Free Transform
you'll enable Free Transform mode. If you drag on one of the corner points,
you can resize your image
Now generally speaking, it's best to avoid enlarging your image this way
because it is going to get a little blurry and blocky
But you can resize it a little bit without too much trouble
So there are some different ways to crop and resize your artwork
and your images using Photoshop CC
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