What does "100% Crop" mean?

Ok I guess I am really showing my amateur side here... This is one of those "Don't even try and do a search cause the phrase is used everywhere" questions. Exactly what is meant when you ask someone to show you "The 100% crop" especially when looking for lens quality? I would have assumed it was referring to the entire original image but I am not sure now after reading some posts. Don't embarrass me too bad

It just means that you zoom in to a 100% view of the photo then take a crop out of that view.

youre on the right track, its pretty much taking an unresized portion of an image by cropping after zooming in to 100% without any resizing.

Ok that makes sense, so if I was experiencing a distortion in the upper right corner and wanted a comment I would crop just that small area of an image, then post it w/o resizing it? Does that sound about right?

FloridaCamera wrote in post #3551966
Ok that makes sense, so if I was experiencing a distortion in the upper right corner and wanted a comment I would crop just that small area of an image, then post it w/o resizing it? Does that sound about right?

yep pretty much. it's generally helpful to include a resized version of the whole image as well as the 100% crop of your "problem area" so that others can get a general idea of what you're shooting too

To make things simple when I post 100% crops I select an area of 'fixed size' on my photo editing software (The max size on this forum is 800x800 pixels, so that's what I select.) and then crop this selection/section of the original image. Some quality reduction is usually needed to get to the 100k size limit too.

That's the way I understand 100% crop anyway.

It's pretty much exactly how it's said - an 100% crop. In other words, a crop made at 100% view (unresized).

When people often scrutinize the IQ of an image, they often want to look at the unresized image. But since often only certain parts of the image is relevant (and because modern images from cameras are so large when viewed at 100%), we want to crop a bit out of it. Hence, the logical progression to the concept of an 100% crop (as applied commonly).

FloridaCamera,
Like carpenter said just zoom into your photo at 100% and take a crop. Here is an example of a 100% crop

This is the photo of a Seagull giving his opinion

John B
what is the best/quickest way to get the end result like you have, to show the forum, (I don't mean quality of photo), just the way you have 2 photos, same size, one a full view, the other a 100% crop

MaDProFF,
With what software?
An example with DPP (I personally use Corel Photo Paint): Goto Tools then select Start Trimming Tool, then take you mouse and while pressing the button go over the area you want to crop. Then go to the tool bar on the right of the photo and put the size you want ex. 500 x 333 pixels. Then make sure or just move the box to the area you want to crop and click OK, then save your cropped photo (make sure you don't overwrite the original file). This will give you a 100% crop of your original photo.

I use CS3, I know how to get the crop etc. it is just the seizing up etc.