How to Crop Images in Photoshop

Cropping the unwanted parts out of a picture has become an almost integral part of editing a photograph. It is necessary to know how to crop images in photoshop since we may not always feel comfortable selecting a single frame with a particular person.

E.g. if you are a wedding photographer and your client does not want a particular person or object to spoil the beautiful wedding moment captured by you then your cropping skills will rescue you. It will ensure that you safely crop out the person or the object out of the pictures and upload only what they like.

Simple Steps in Cropping Images in Photoshop

A definite number of steps should be followed in order to crop an image with the help of Photoshop.

  1. Prepare Your Image

The first step of cropping your picture with the help of Photoshop is to prepare the image.

You will have to open the image that you want to edit in Photoshop. You can open the image by clicking on the File menu, or you can also drag the image on the workspace of  Photoshop.

This image will get listed as Background, and you will be able to see this in the Layer that is located on the right side of your workspace. You will have to click on the icon saying lock in order to use the image as a type of layer.

You will then have to hover in the area of that selected picture that you will like to focus on. You can do so by scrolling on the picture towards the area of general interest.

Then you will have to press the ALT key and move the scroll of your mouse to go forward to zoom in. To zoom out, you will have to go backward. Nonetheless, you can also select the zooming tool to use the zooming facility on the picture.

  1. Prepare Your Outline

The next step is to select the outlines of the area you want to crop. It is similar to making a tracing with a pen and paper. Once you have made the outline on the picture you can simply drag away that part and replace it with something else.

To do that you will need to use the lasso tool from the toolbox menu of Photoshop.

By clicking the lasso you will get the options of three kinds they are, magnetic lasso, regular lasso, and polygonal lasso. All of these are little different from each other, but all of them will allow you to shape an outline.

The regular lasso is quite similar the pencil tool of Photoshop. You will have to hold your mouse’s button down and then drag around the cursor to create the outline of your image.

If you want to use the polygonal lasso, then you will have to click on one particular point of the picture and the drag that line to the next stop. You will have to keep repeating these two steps until you have effectively created an outline that marks a closed area.

The magnetic lasso also works in a similar way. Though, it has a quite better understanding of the edges of an image, and thus it helps in creating a more particular outline.

  1. Cut the Marked Portion Out

After you have outlined the shape of the part that you no longer want in your image, you will have various options. In case you simply want to remove the entire selected portion then you will have to use the Delete button. You can also press backspace, and the marked part will get deleted.

This would make a blank portion visible where the cutout part was previously situated and would open up the layer that was behind the image.

Conclusion

The process of grasping the art of cropping items craftily is not very easy. At the beginning, it might be difficult to prepare a proper outline or to cut the desired portion. However, with time and practice, you will master the cropping methods.

Hope you got a profound idea reading this informative article on “How to Crop Images in Photoshop.“Do you know any other way to crop the images in photoshop? Do let me know by commenting below. 

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