Every once in a while you may realize you can’t crop a photo to the right size. Maybe it’s for a print, or a certain aspect ratio for the web. This week’s tutorial will help you out with a couple of ideas if that happens. Enjoy!
About Me
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
A superb tutorial Matt, especially your method for using Content Aware to fill missing space or to change from the standard 4:3 ratio most digi cams create, to another size format.
As you mentioned at 15:38, the best tip is to shoot a bit looser, so in post you can more easily crop to a different format size. I frequently create High Def photos for airing on local television shows which have to be 1920×1080 pixels, so I more often will shoot less tight, and crop as desired in post.
Cheers and thanks for another fab tutorial!
This was so Helpful! I work mostly on flower images and 11×14 is my go to for printing them.
I bought your PS system and am learning so many great tricks to use in my photography.
Thank you so much.
Long time fan. You’re the best. Thank you
Enjoyed the tutorial. Didn’t think I would use it, but saved the link. So far have used it to great success twice.
Thanks for this and all the other goodies!
Bob
Thank you, as always its instructive, helpful, beneficial. Great teaching.
Excellent tutorial!
An Excellent tutorial!!! Thank you for publishing it.
Very good video. Thanks
Very good tutorial Matt. Thanks for sharing. I forgot about some of those ways to fill the edges of an image.
Thank you so much for this! I tried the first method tonight and it worked! I am not a PS user, but just might get the hang of it with your help.
“What you can do when you can’t crop.” Great short video, brief and to the point.
Keep up the good work.
Very helpful as usual.
Thank you Matt
As always I learned a few new things with this tutorial
Another excellent tutorial, many thanks
Great tips and you are right, I wasn’t aware of method #3.
Super tutorial. Thanks!
Your videos always help me, and the extra three minute video you offered here really helped me. I was so tired of Sharpen AI taking over my RAW images. Everytime I wanted to simply view an image on my iMac it opened in Sharpen AI. Well, thanks to you I think I now have a handle on this. Thanks so much for what you do for us. You’re a great teacher.
Nice job Matt– very clear and well-illustrated explanations! I was already familiar with the first two approaches, and was intrigued by the Content Aware Scale tool. Even liked it the most with your mountain image– kept that dark area in lower right from expanding.
Thanks for the work you do
Joe
If you’re on Instagram, you already know that images can be (at most) 4×5 (portrait) or 16×9 (landscape). Rather than having IG decide how to crop your image, you can create a frame of the appropriate size and place your image within the frame. Since IG has a white background, just stretch the image to the frame edge (w/o changing the aspect ratio) and your white edges will disappear when you post it.
Mike.
P.S. The Flip Vertical/Flip Horizontal is also helpful for doing canvas prints/gallery wraps.
I run into this problem often. Your tutorial was extremely helpful as always. Thank you!
Thanks, Matt! I’m working on something that needed a few more inches at the top and this tutorial solved the problem. I was trying to remember how the content aware scale worked, but content aware fill was a lot easier.
Always learn so much from these little tutorials!
Matt, I always learn from you. I so enjoyed your presentations at the PS summit this year. Thanks for doing this.
Thank you Matt,
your video tutorial proved me right when I experimented in that direction some years back, the clone stamp helps and as you love to say, if you don`t tell, nobody will know.
Your tutorials are always so beneficial…I found myself nodding affirmatively along with you…as everything you were saying made perfect sense. Thank you!
Great overview of all these options. Including the last thought.
Great tip! Thanks.
Content Aware Scale!!… Who knew! 🙂 I think you touched on it as a new feature when it came out… but this is a great, quick, how to! Thanks!
Good info!!
Very cool. Thanks Matt for another great tutorial.
As always great content and information Matt. Love your tutorials and love the how to use Lightroom and Photoshop courses I purchased from you! This is the year of learning. Cheers!
Thanks. I don’t remember if what you demonstrated. I took a photo with the American flag with a reflection pool. The top of the flag pole was too close to the top of the frame. Using PS I added sky and the tree branches on the left of the frame. No one knew.
Very informative. I’ve used Photoshop many years. It’s always good to learn a new technique. Thanks
Enjoyed your video but it was a little confusing when you refer to resizing as a “crop” but it seems you are using Transform to resize. Finally figured it out but trying to actually do what you were describing was a bit difficult until I noticed that the photo icons were different than what would be displayed in the “crop” function.
Why not use Content Aware Crop? That is what I start with – and then move on to other options if that doesn’t Wordl?
One thought to add to your arsenal. I have had good luck with images like your mountain, with a rectangular section of just the clouds, and then a transform such as warp, to elongate the existing clouds.
As always – great information! Thank you.
Thanks for showing how the content aware scale was working with saved selections. Never given that a try before. I would also like Paul suggested, recommend people to also try the spot healing brush to even out areas that look too alike after copy/paste, in combination with clone tool.
Great tutorial Matt! I’ve been afraid of content aware scaling, and you really opened my eyes on that one.
One additional tip on your first two techniques (content aware fill, and copy-and-mirror): the spot heal brush does a wonderful job of cleaning up the straight-line artifacts that can happen at the seam between reality and artificial.