100% crop

I asked this question once before - what on earth is a 100% crop. I thought I understood the answer but I'm actually none the wiser. I see the term used all the time - never "50% crop" or "75% crop". In any case, surely a 100% crop involves taking away 100% of the image and leaving none?

I've asked photographers here if they know what it means and none does. So I'm not the only person.

peterbj7 wrote in post #6065623
I asked this question once before - what on earth is a 100% crop. I thought I understood the answer but I'm actually none the wiser. I see the term used all the time - never "50% crop" or "75% crop". In any case, surely a 100% crop involves taking away 100% of the image and leaving none?

I've asked photographers here if they know what it means and none does. So I'm not the only person.

That is when you open your photo in Photoshop (or other editing program), and then without resizing the shot, you use the "Rectangle Selection Tool" and select an area. You MUST NOT use the "Crop Tool". Once you have an area, you then crop away every thing other than the selection by using the Image>Crop Command. For the purpose of posting here, you want the selection to have a longest dimension of no more than 1200 pixels.

The resulting image is called a "100% Crop". Because 1) its resolution is at 100% of the native shot - neither resized up nor down, and 2) it is a Cropped portion of a larger shot.

When you post a 100% crop, the primary purpose is to show the native sharpness (or lack of sharpness), or to draw attention to a certain area of a shot. A 100% crop is not usually meant to be a final image for printing.

In THIS POST, the lower shot is a 100% crop.

Rad

It essentially means setting the zoom level to 100%. One pixel in the camera=one pixel on your screen. For a 40D, that means showing a picture in its full size, 3888x2592, OR taking a section of the full-size picture and cropping it without scaling it.

Radtech1 wrote in post #6065652
That is when you open your photo in Photoshop (or other editing program), and then without resizing the shot, you use the "Rectangle Selection Tool" and select an area. You MUST NOT use the "Crop Tool". Once you have an area, you then crop away every thing other than the selection by using the Image>Crop Command. For the purpose of posting here, you want the selection to have a longest dimension of no more than 1200 pixels.

The resulting image is called a "100% Crop". Because 1) its resolution is at 100% of the native shot - neither resized up nor down, and 2) it is a Cropped portion of a larger shot.

When you post a 100% crop, the primary purpose is to show the native sharpness (or lack of sharpness), or to draw attention to a certain area of a shot. A 100% crop is not usually meant to be a final image for printing.

In THIS POST, the lower shot is a 100% crop.

Rad

If I'm reading your post right, then this isn't a 100% crop as I understand it. A 100% (from what I know) is when the picture (not resized, as you said) is put on the 100% zoom level in photoshop. The crop that eliminates all data not in that 100% view is a 100% crop. I think.

yodasarmpit wrote in post #6065656
It's where you show all or a section of a photo without reducing the size i.e. not reducing the resolution after transferring from the camera.

A nice clean explanation of what "100% crop" refers to.

Samanax

manutd101 wrote in post #6066770
If I'm reading your post right, then this isn't a 100% crop as I understand it. A 100% (from what I know) is when the picture (not resized, as you said) is put on the 100% zoom level in photoshop. The crop that eliminates all data not in that 100% view is a 100% crop. I think.

Huh?

Samanx

manutd101 wrote in post #6066770
The crop that eliminates all data not in that 100% view is a 100% crop.

I can't for the life of me figure out what this sentence means.

???

Is sounds like you are saying this:

Open a photo in photoshop. It automatically comes up in a window so that you can see the whole thing. The "zoom" applied to picture in that window might be at 25% or 33% or 16%, or whatever - it just comes up zoomed so that you can see the whole photo in a window on your workspace.

Then you change the zoom to 100%. This gives you a "close up view" in that same window of a small section of what you saw at the smaller zoom.

Then, using ONLY THE AREA IN THE WINDOW - whatever part of the image that happens to be - you crop to the area of the window which eliminates all the data outside of the window that is at a 100% zoom. (Your words: The crop that eliminates all data not in that 100% view.) Then that and only that is a 100% crop.

Is that what you mean?

Rad

peterbj7 wrote in post #6065623
I've asked photographers here if they know what it means and none does. So I'm not the only person.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the photographers here know what "100% crop" means. Who did you ask?

Samanax

Radtech1 wrote in post #6065652
That is when you open your photo in Photoshop (or other editing program), and then without resizing the shot, you use the "Rectangle Selection Tool" and select an area. You MUST NOT use the "Crop Tool". Once you have an area, you then crop away every thing other than the selection by using the Image>Crop Command. Rad

Hi Rad, just curious, why not use the "crop tool" for this ?
I assume it affects it in some way.

Dusty wrote in post #6067049
Hi Rad, just curious, why not use the "crop tool" for this ?
I assume it affects it in some way.

The crop tool re-samples and upscales the shot so the actual original pixels from the camera no longer exist. Kind of like when you make something bigger in a copy machine. Since the whole point of a 100% crop is to take a close look at the pixels from the camera, this kind of defeats the purpose.

The selection tool, then Image>Crop is more like cutting something with a scissors, it simply removes the area you are not interested in, and keeps the rest.

Rad

Radtech1 wrote in post #6065652
That is when you open your photo in Photoshop (or other editing program), and then without resizing the shot, you use the "Rectangle Selection Tool" and select an area. You MUST NOT use the "Crop Tool". Once you have an area, you then crop away every thing other than the selection by using the Image>Crop Command. For the purpose of posting here, you want the selection to have a longest dimension of no more than 1200 pixels.

I use the "crop tool" in Photoshop CS2 all the time and do not get any resizing going on. If I crop half of an image with approximately 3500 pixels in the horizontal plane, the resulting crop has approximately 1750 pixels in it.

What settings may make the differences between what you've described and what I experience?

SkipD wrote in post #6067142
I use the "crop tool" in Photoshop CS2 all the time and do not get any resizing going on. If I crop half of an image with approximately 3500 pixels in the horizontal plane, the resulting crop has approximately 1750 pixels in it.

What settings may make the differences between what you've described and what I experience?

Well let me check... BRB

SkipD wrote in post #6067142
I use the "crop tool" in Photoshop CS2 all the time and do not get any resizing going on. If I crop half of an image with approximately 3500 pixels in the horizontal plane, the resulting crop has approximately 1750 pixels in it.

What settings may make the differences between what you've described and what I experience?

Got it...

If you remove the values from the Height and Width fields and leave them blank then the crop tool will behave like the the selection tool as I described.

If there are numbers in those fields, then it will re-sample.

So sometimes is behaves one way, and other times it behaves differently. One more reason to recommend against it as a tool for the novice PSer to use in order to create a 100% crop.

Rad

Thanks guys, that's perfectly clear ..... err, I think.

When i said I asked people "here" I didn't mean on POTN, but "here" geographically, in Belize. We do have quite a few photographers here, though most with Nikons (actually all of them - I can't think of anyone here with a Canon except me) and most who never change their lens (to avoid the dreaded sticky dust I have so fallen foul of).

Radtech1 wrote in post #6066957
I can't for the life of me figure out what this sentence means.

???

Is sounds like you are saying this:

Open a photo in photoshop. It automatically comes up in a window so that you can see the whole thing. The "zoom" applied to picture in that window might be at 25% or 33% or 16%, or whatever - it just comes up zoomed so that you can see the whole photo in a window on your workspace.

Then you change the zoom to 100%. This gives you a "close up view" in that same window of a small section of what you saw at the smaller zoom.

Then, using ONLY THE AREA IN THE WINDOW - whatever part of the image that happens to be - you crop to the area of the window which eliminates all the data outside of the window that is at a 100% zoom. (Your words: The crop that eliminates all data not in that 100% view.) Then that and only that is a 100% crop.

Is that what you mean?

Rad

Yeah...couldn't really explain it though. Is that right, or am I an idiot? Although you can of course move the 100% view window.