Need help with cropping please!

I'm sure this sounds like a ridiculous question to those with a bit of PP experience but i'm afraid i have a LONG wayto go till i reach any level of proficiency in photoshop!

My question is, when you are cropping an image, how do you make sure that your crop box is the proper size-ratio for making a print later on... as opposed to just haphazardly cropping out whatever part happens to "look good"?

Not sure if that makes any sense but hopefully SOMEONE will understand what i mean. thanks!

When the cropping tool is active there are some options in the banner at the top of the window. Two of these options are Width and Length. Simply put your desired ratio in there and then crop away. The default will be the ratio the image already is in. NOTE, if you are cropping a different image later on and the crop is not doing what you think it should, look at the length and width options and make sure they are what you expect. There is also a button you can push to reset the ratio to be the same as the original image ratio which is faster than simply deleting the numbers in the W and L option boxes.

Holding the "shift" key down and dragging one of the corner tags keeps the crop window in the same aspect ratio as the original.

That's the easiest method.

Are you always going to print at the same size later on? Frame makers have made life extra hard with 5x7, 8x10, etc. Since these are not the natural crop ratios of our digital files. I prefer to shoot everything in raw, then when I need to print at a different crop ratio I just reopen the file and crop away. The crop tool in photoshop allows you to manually set the crop length and width or save as a preset any size you would like. I have mine set for all the sizes that I generally print: 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, 8x12, 12x18, 16x20,etc. I would use the forum search tool as there are quite a few good threads on cropping here.

Matthew_h wrote in post #4657187
Holding the "shift" key down and dragging one of the corner tags keeps the crop window in the same aspect ratio as the original.

That's the easiest method.

tha's fine if you want a 6x4 (from a camera with a 3:2 ratio) but what if you want a 10x8? or a 7x5? etc..... Not so easy now....

Dermit wrote in post #4656943
When the cropping tool is active there are some options in the banner at the top of the window. Two of these options are Width and Length. Simply put your desired ratio in there and then crop away. The default will be the ratio the image already is in. NOTE, if you are cropping a different image later on and the crop is not doing what you think it should, look at the length and width options and make sure they are what you expect. There is also a button you can push to reset the ratio to be the same as the original image ratio which is faster than simply deleting the numbers in the W and L option boxes.

This is the easiest and best way to crop. Enter your image size (leave the resolution box blank) and select your crop.

The Height/Width boxes are by default blank until you enter a crop size which will remain there until cleared.

If you know what resolution you want your image set at, you can enter this information too and your image will be resampled however I prefer not to resample if I still have a large enough image to get a print in excess of 180 - 200ppi.

Thank you everyone, i will have to play with it. My solution has always been just to drag any ol' size box around the best part of the image and click "crop". Wasn't working out too well!

Thanks again!

As a side note, i always do all my cropping in Lightroom as it never alters any of the original data. This way if I crop to 8x10 and later want a 4x6 I can 'get back' the data that was 'cropped out'. If you crop in PS the data cropped out is lost forever once you save. just thought I'd mention that part. ...and, yes, LR treats JPG, TIFF, and RAW, etc. all the same as it never alters the originals and you can always get back to the image you imported in to it.

Dermit wrote in post #4659268
As a side note, i always do all my cropping in Lightroom as it never alters any of the original data. This way if I crop to 8x10 and later want a 4x6 I can 'get back' the data that was 'cropped out'. If you crop in PS the data cropped out is lost forever once you save. just thought I'd mention that part. ...and, yes, LR treats JPG, TIFF, and RAW, etc. all the same as it never alters the originals and you can always get back to the image you imported in to it.

I do exactly the same as this although it can also be done with Adobe Camera Raw. If you have a RAW image then crop this and output at its highest resolution. If I'm editing JPG or TIFs I usually just use Ps and give the new file a name.