Cropping Images and then print them

[jimchapin468]

If I do a 100% crop and then go print it will that degrade the image? If so what is the best way to cut out a section of a picture and then print it? Thanks for all the help -- Jimmy --

[mdenigris]

Select the area you want to print, and select Image --> Crop. This will do a straight pixel crop with no resampling. Then you can print it.

[Curtis N]

It doesn't degrade the image, but it tends to reduce the apparent sharpness because you are effectively enlarging the cropped area more. If the image is sharp to begin with, you don't crop a lot off and don't make a huge print, it generally works fine. Expect the results to be similar to what would happen if you made a larger print of the entire image and then cut it down with scissors.

Since I'm not very good at composing with the camera, I tend to give myself a little extra room when I take the shot and crop later. I've even cropped the sides off a horizontal image to make it vertical (throwing away 56% of the original image) and vice-versa.

The most important thing to remember when cropping is to make the aspect ratio (length/width) equal to your intended print size. All of the good image editing programs have tools to make this fairly efforless.