Lightroom cropping

Unless I am missing something the crop tool doesn't indicate a percentage of crop or a ruler or anything. When I have positioned the four sides where I want how can I tell if I am removing 50% or 30% or whatever?

And in this example I have the Navigator Zoom to 66% and the window positioned to just what I would to crop to. Can the crop tool snap to that?

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2kvH​h6n

I don't think there's a way to do what you want easily. Lightroom is pretty bad with some technical options for things like cropping. If you have photoshop right click the image > edit in > photoshop and it will make a copy with the photoshop adjustments (or in this case cropping) when you save.

There have been lots of lightroom plugins that cover the holes for things like cropping but I have no idea how good they are. This video might be helpful if you don't have photoshop, it's quite a long workaround though: https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=4wsoSeuF_4I

You could do the crop, then Library Export the photo at full size, then see what the pixel count of the JPG happens to be, and compare that to the original image pixel count. But nothing reported in realtime

chuckmiller wrote in post #19186172
Unless I am missing something the crop tool doesn't indicate a percentage of crop or a ruler or anything. When I have positioned the four sides where I want how can I tell if I am removing 50% or 30% or whatever?

And in this example I have the Navigator Zoom to 66% and the window positioned to just what I would to crop to. Can the crop tool snap to that?

You're not missing anything. You can't tell the percentage you're removing. The crop tool can't snap to that.

In my earlier days with Lr, that drove me crazy! I then let it go. The best thing you can do is crop to the size that looks right. In the example you gave, given you're in Windows, you can use the "Print Screen" button, use the Windows Paint tool, paste what you captured into Paint, and save it. Use that reference to do your actual cropping. Otherwise, go with your gut and crop to what looks right.

Wilt wrote in post #19186226
You could do the crop, then Library Export the photo at full size, then see what the pixel count of the JPG happens to be, and compare that to the original image pixel count. But nothing reported in realtime

Actually you can do this easier and faster. I'm on a Mac, so it might be just slightly different from Windows, but this should be close enough. In the OP's image, he's in the Develop module. If you go down the View menu, there should be something that says, "View Options". Clicking on that should bring up a window that says, "Develop View Options". That's what allows you to select what gets displayed in the upper left about the photo. In his case, it's the file name, common photo settings, and the lens. You can have two different sets of information, Loop 1 and 2. In the loop options you can choose "Cropped Dimensions". What you can do is see the size of the original image, crop it, and then see the size of the current crop. If you don't like it, you can undo and recrop until you're satisfied.

Chuck, as an aside, my member "name" is mathogre. I'm a mathematician, and let's just say that precision, order, and control matter a lot to me with my professional work. Here in photography, this is art. I don't care what percentage I've removed. I do occasionally look at the resulting size of the image, especially if I'm shooting sports (pre-Covid) and I had to crop a lot because action happened at the other end of the field. It's only the image that matters. The photography matters - knowing my subject, drawing attention to my subject, and simplifying. I'm colorblind, too, so that's always fun. Cropping percentage is arbitrary. Straighten your image at all, and you're already cropping. You're also degrading the image by having Lr render pixels that are not perfectly vertical or horizontal by virtue of your rotation. Even that doesn't matter, given the quality of our equipment and of Lr.

Crop to make it look right. Don't worry about how much you're chopping, unless you're always removing most of your image. If you're constantly cropping large amounts of your images, that might suggest you need to either get closer or you need a longer focal length lens. That said, I think cropping in this case, with the 100mm Macro and the fuzzy family member, works just fine.

Hope this helps!

mathogre wrote in post #19186286
Chuck, as an aside, my member "name" is mathogre. I'm a mathematician, and let's just say that precision, order, and control matter a lot to me with my professional work. Here in photography, this is art. I don't care what percentage I've removed. I do occasionally ............... Cropping percentage is arbitrary. Straighten your image at all, and you're already cropping. You're also degrading the image by having Lr render pixels that are not perfectly vertical or horizontal by virtue of your rotation. Even that doesn't matter, given the quality of our equipment and of Lr.

Crop to make it look right. Don't worry about how much you're chopping, unless you're always removing most of your image. If you're constantly cropping large amounts of your images, that might suggest you need to either get closer or you need a longer focal length lens. That said, I think cropping in this case, with the 100mm Macro and the fuzzy family member, works just fine.

This is a really nice way of thinking about it how LR works, how it's designed to work, and how it fits into a wider work flow.


Chuck, remember LR is the digital version of a darkroom. In both contexts you crop for framing and to fit a particular ratio. In the darkroom final image size comes from the enlarging process, and in LR it comes from the export process. Remember a RAW file can be at least doubled in it's native resolution with out reducing image quality. This means the final crop size, in pixels or as a percentage of original image size, is meaningless. It's even more meaningless if your doing what LR does really well and batch processing multiple images to the same crop ratio.

LR also fits right at the start of Adobes work flow, i.e. it's the first program to touch an image, and the last program would be Photoshop for the photographer or Indesign for publication, both of which have tools for cropping to pixel or percentage sizes.

I use the info but it still is not the best approach. If it is really critical I sent to PS, crop there and apply those numbers in LR. I don't send it back to LR, I just use it as a guide.

All good stuff, thank you everyone.

mathogre wrote in post #19186286
... In the OP's image, he's in the Develop module. If you go down the View menu, there should be something that says, "View Options". Clicking on that should bring up a window that says, "Develop View Options". That's what allows you to select what gets displayed in the upper left about the photo. In his case, it's the file name, common photo settings, and the lens. You can have two different sets of information, Loop 1 and 2. In the loop options you can choose "Cropped Dimensions". What you can do is see the size of the original image, crop it, and then see the size of the current crop. If you don't like it, you can undo and recrop until you're satisfied.

...

I did not know about Info 1 and Info 2. The I key rotates through them.

Another question:
Hey mathoger,

If an image is 6000x6000 and you crop it to 3000x3000, you have removed/cropped away 75%. What amount of zoom would that be?
(is cutting the pixel count in half a 100% crop??)


6000x6000=36,000,000
3000x3000=9,000,000 (25% remaining of 36,000,000)
How much of a crop would this ^^ be?

chuckmiller wrote in post #19186596
Another question:
Hey mathoger,

If an image is 6000x6000 and you crop it to 3000x3000, you have removed/cropped away 75%. What amount of zoom would that be?
(is cutting the pixel count in half a 100% crop??)


6000x6000=36,000,000
3000x3000=9,000,000 (25% remaining of 36,000,000)
How much of a crop would this ^^ be?

Hi Chuck!

I have no idea what the amount of zoom or crop those would be. My view of it is that if I crop down to around 12MP, I've got a photo that I can print big, so even a 9MP square image would be printable in a large size. I tried Googling "crop effective zoom), and nothing was obvious.

The convention is the 'magnification' or 'crop' are both 'linear' (single direction), although in the case of optics and 'power' the number is area based.

1. So taking 1" x 1.5" sensor size image to 8x12" print size is an '8X' print, and going from '8X' to '16X' (16x24") print is 2X relative size of large print vs. smaller print.
   
   
2. And an 8X loupe is 8*area, or about 2.8X (sqrt of 8) linear magnification