Cropping Photos

What do you do when cropping photos? Do you resize all your photos to a standard size when/after cropping? Or just have a finished size of what you cropped to? Like my XTi shoots at 3888 x 2592 pixels. After cropping say 100px off height and width, would you resize to 3888 x 2592? Or leave it at the new 3788 x 2492??? I've always done photos for website stuff, so I'd crop them down to a certain pixel size to match the area I want on the webpage, but now, printing photos and such, we're playing a new game... just trying to learn what's 'standard'.

Thanks!

~Kevin

First off, don't use the term crop for everything. Crop means to remove some of the image, like taking your XTi shot from a 3:2 ratio out of the camera to a 5:4 ratio to print a 10:8. Resize is a term used to describe when you maintain the same image but smaller, like taking a 3888x2592 pixel image and resizing it to 800x533 for web use. Sometimes you do both to the same image.

Hi Kevin,
I don't quite understand your question. Certainly i am not aware of any "standard" for this matter. I crop an image only if the image needs cropping. I don't crop it to the size i want. As a matter of fact, I resize it to the size i want most of the time without even cropping the image, for web posting and/or printing.
Does this help?

Fee

No, I didn't make myself clear I guess... I do (don't do?) that often... and when I said 'standard', I did that kinda tounge in cheek because I realize everyone is going to do what works for them and there really is no 'standard'.

let me try again:

Assume I have a photo that needs to be cropped to remove excess dead-space or whatever reason... If I use something like PS to crop, I'm going to have a smaller finished image. I'm wondering at this point, would you (whoever is reading this) resize the image to bring it back to the size of the original, or just leave it at it's smaller size? If it's going on a website, definately yes it has to be resized to fit the space on the page. I guess I'm just wondering how many if anyone would resize the photo back to original size after cropping like say if you are 'done for now' and going to archive it or something.... I have just been leaving photos the way they are cropped and storing them as is... works for me doing web stuff... if I need it again, I'll resize the photo for the particular use (tho for websites, pretty much it gets used for why I took it, and then that's all done for good). Just trying to develop a workflow and storage technique here that makes sense and, because the printing and stuff is new, don't want to find out the hard way that I should have done it differently that I have been, and either have to go back and mess with them or whatever.... is that better? Trying to change my head from a 'self-taught webdesign-thinking' mode to an 'experience-instructed photographer-thinking' mode.

I think i see what you are saying (correct me if i'm still wrong). After you crop a 3888 x 2592 pixel image to become 3788 x 2492, that's all the data is left. If you "make" it to 3888 x 2592 pixels again, i think that's called upscaling. Not sure what most people do, but nope, i normally don't upscale my images after i crop them.

yeah.. that's it... never heard the term upscaling, but yes you got it... see I assume if I cropped a photo to where only a quarter of it was left, and you 'upscale' it back to original size, then you could be screwing it up... but also in thinking about this, there may be some reason that I would want to save the original PLUS the cropped version (so I could re-crop differently later if needed). My head just hasn't had to think this way and I don't know what all to consider. Before, I'd take a pic of the front of your building for your website, crop and resize to make it fit your page, and then who cared after that... a year down the road you want a redesign on your site, we're taking new photos anyways. Now I'm trying to learn more artistic talents, better photography, and taking lasting images (images.. sounds classier than photos doesn't it? heheheh) so I want to know how best to handle the files for future considerations... that's all. Learning by making mistakes is a great teacher, but sometimes it sucks, like losing 4 years of digital photos of my son playing soccer when he was younger because I didn't verify that the cd's were readable after copying to them, and I reformatted the harddrive assuming I had good backups... hard lesson learned, but not fun.

knt3424 wrote in post #3092666
No, I didn't make myself clear I guess... I do (don't do?) that often... and when I said 'standard', I did that kinda tounge in cheek because I realize everyone is going to do what works for them and there really is no 'standard'.

let me try again:

Assume I have a photo that needs to be cropped to remove excess dead-space or whatever reason... If I use something like PS to crop, I'm going to have a smaller finished image. I'm wondering at this point, would you (whoever is reading this) resize the image to bring it back to the size of the original, or just leave it at it's smaller size? If it's going on a website, definately yes it has to be resized to fit the space on the page. I guess I'm just wondering how many if anyone would resize the photo back to original size after cropping like say if you are 'done for now' and going to archive it or something.... I have just been leaving photos the way they are cropped and storing them as is... works for me doing web stuff... if I need it again, I'll resize the photo for the particular use (tho for websites, pretty much it gets used for why I took it, and then that's all done for good). Just trying to develop a workflow and storage technique here that makes sense and, because the printing and stuff is new, don't want to find out the hard way that I should have done it differently that I have been, and either have to go back and mess with them or whatever.... is that better? Trying to change my head from a 'self-taught webdesign-thinking' mode to an 'experience-instructed photographer-thinking' mode.

Now I understand. The only reason to upsample an image is if you do not have enough information for your intended output. So if in your exapmle you are left with 3788x2492 you can still print up to a ~12x8 photo at 300dpi. If you go bigger than that you probably would scale down the dpi anyway so at 240dpi your image would still print at 15x10. At 200dpi you can have a print ~ 19x12. So only upsample if you need to go bigger and don't have the info (read pixels).

knt3424 wrote in post #3092829
yeah.. that's it... never heard the term upscaling, but yes you got it... see I assume if I cropped a photo to where only a quarter of it was left, and you 'upscale' it back to original size, then you could be screwing it up... but also in thinking about this, there may be some reason that I would want to save the original PLUS the cropped version (so I could re-crop differently later if needed). My head just hasn't had to think this way and I don't know what all to consider. Before, I'd take a pic of the front of your building for your website, crop and resize to make it fit your page, and then who cared after that... a year down the road you want a redesign on your site, we're taking new photos anyways. Now I'm trying to learn more artistic talents, better photography, and taking lasting images (images.. sounds classier than photos doesn't it? heheheh) so I want to know how best to handle the files for future considerations... that's all. Learning by making mistakes is a great teacher, but sometimes it sucks, like losing 4 years of digital photos of my son playing soccer when he was younger because I didn't verify that the cd's were readable after copying to them, and I reformatted the harddrive assuming I had good backups... hard lesson learned, but not fun.

Here is how I normally edit a photo with PS CS2:

Open a RAW photo in ACR and make adjustments
Open the photo in CS2 and make any adjustments
Save the layered file as a PSD or TIFF
Flatten the layers
Crop to a specific print dimension
Sharpen for my specific print dimension
Save the file with another name like "Image_4x6"

I shoot raw most of the time. So, they are my "digital negatives". I crop, post-process, and save the edited image as PSD in Photoshop. Then i use Save For Web to get a smaller version for web posting. In case my Photoshop skill improves (hopefully) 3, 5 years down the road, i can come back and start pp the same image again from my raw, and toss away the previous PSD. Or, keep the previous PSD and tell my kids how much i suck when i first started photography.

I've wondered about something similar. Are there certain standards to use when cropping as far as aspect ratios? I understand cropping to a popular print aspect ratio such as 8x10 but other than printing is there some kind of "generally accepted" crop ratio or does it just depend on the how you want the final product to look? Does this make any sense? ...

Elizabeth Thomas wrote in post #3092950
is there some kind of "generally accepted" crop ratio or does it just depend on the how you want the final product to look?

No such standard that i can think of. You can crop pretty much however you like if the image is not for printing. Even if you change your mind later and decide to print it, nowadays i'm sure some printing lab can do some custom size printing.

Elizabeth Thomas wrote in post #3092950
I've wondered about something similar. Are there certain standards to use when cropping as far as aspect ratios? I understand cropping to a popular print aspect ratio such as 8x10 but other than printing is there some kind of "generally accepted" crop ratio or does it just depend on the how you want the final product to look? Does this make any sense? ...

Crop to your hearts desire. For web it really doesn't matter. For printing you might resort to standard sizes for certain frames but if you have an oddbal size just use a custom matte in a standard frame.

Apparently, I explained myself better cuz that kinda took off... thanks guys. Now answer me this, is there any amount of post-processing that would make

<----- that guy

look good hehehe

knt3424 wrote in post #3093176
Apparently, I explained myself better cuz that kinda took off... thanks guys. Now answer me this, is there any amount of post-processing that would make

<----- that guy

look good hehehe

Um, no comment.:p Now you know why my avatar is not my pic.

knt3424 wrote in post #3093176
Apparently, I explained myself better cuz that kinda took off... thanks guys. Now answer me this, is there any amount of post-processing that would make

<----- that guy

look good hehehe

That's quite challenging man. The best i have ever tried is this guy below, but that's nothing compared to your request. ****** BEFORE *************** AFTER ***********

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