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Cropping to an actual ratio
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Hi everyone,
I’m going to admit that, rather naively, I thought that the crop tool cropped to a ratio. I recently used it to crop TONS of images which were later going to be printed. I wanted them at a 1:1.5 ratio
Little did I know that the crop tool cropped then to a 1inch:1.5inch ratio but I didn’t notice because it bumped the resolution up (WAY WAY up to around 6,000+ dpi!) so that, to me, the image looked the same size on my screen, saved at the save large file size etc.I know, I know – I should have at some point viewed the images at print size in Photoshop, but well, I didn’t.
Trust me… it was a tough lesson learnt when I had to go back and copy and paste each image into a document with a 300dpi just to undo the damage and increase the width and height so that when printed they didn’t all look like a postage stamp (a postage stamp with an amazingly high dpi!).
My question is is there any way to crop to an ACTUAL ratio? Where I can set a 1:1.5 ratio and it crops my image to that ratio without changing the dpi, width and height (bar the small changes from the area being cropped off of course).
I’m using Photoshop CS.
If anyone can help me on this one I’d be really grateful – thanks!
When I am cropping to ratio i select the crop tool then at the top of the screen there are two box’s Width and Height. I enter my ratio into these and then draw my square/rectangle and it keeps the ratios
Yes I put in 1 into the width box and 1.5 into the height box thinking that this was setting a ratio but what I didn’t realise was that it automatically puts an “inch” beside these values and crops to a 1 inch : 1.5 inch ratio and just bumps up the dpi by insane amounts to compensate.
As I said, I’m using Photoshop CS so perhaps your version of Photoshop doesn’t do this.
I didn’t enter anything into the resolution box at all.
Photoshop set the resolution to whatever it felt would compensate for the tiny size. So all my data was kept in each image it was just crammed into a tiny space.
The only things I entered where ‘1’ and ‘1.5’ into the Width and height boxes.
Photoshop automatically puts an ‘inch’ measurement beside these values that I can’t seem to stop it doing and it leaves the resolution box blank.I only noticed the high resolution when looking at the image size properties after I had noticed they printed out tiny.
Umm, OK, I don’t know any further (I do my cropping in DPP as part of my RA workflow).
What should work is the Rectangular Marque Tool and select the option or style “Fixed Aspect Ratio”. Then go to “Image” > “Crop”.
Oh, and one other thing – try working with an aspect ratio of 2:3 instead of 1:1.5. It’s the same difference really, but just a more “standard” way of describing the aspect ratio.
Like Martin already described I input the ratio for my crop in the Width and Height parameters leaving the resolution blank. PS tags on ‘cm’ to each numeric value, but I was under the impression that it was to be ignored. I leave the Resolution setting blank.
Example.. I want a square crop so I enter Width=1 and Height=1.
This performs the crop exactly the way I want it, but does not resize the image to 1cm by 1cm, it just ensures that the crop tool is restricted to the desired ratio no matter what way I try and adjust it within the image.
Peter Cox describes this in this tutorial: http://www.petercox.ie/tutorials/straighten_crop.php
I do exactly what John says. I use 6:4 for my crop – it’s just what sticks in my mind from the photo print size. It’s the same as doing 2:3 or 1:1.5.
Zoom to actual pixels and you’ll see your detail is still there. Save as full sized 12-JPEG and you’ll see the true size of the image, (either by checking the image size in pixels or just by looking at it “full size”).
Yes I had previously viewed Peter’s great tutorial and perhaps that’s why I didn’t notice the ‘inch’ being automatically placed after the numbers I put in.
I had been following and doing what he does in this tutorial exactly.nfl fan: I agree with what you are saying and that’s what I THOUGHT Photoshop was doing for me… I thought it was just restricting my crop to a ratio, but instead it was cropping my selected area to a restricted SIZE and, as I mentioned, bumping up the dpi so that the image still looked big and clear and detailed.
… I’m starting to think maybe it’s just a problem with my Photoshop or something then???
If someone could do me a huge favour I’d be very, very grateful:
Open a photo.
Select the crop tool.
Put ‘1’ in the Width and ‘1.5’ in the height box.
Let Photoshop automatically put in the ‘inch’ (or cm) beside these numbers.
Leave the Resolution box blank.
Select a section of your photo.
Hit enter to apply the crop.
Save your image as a copy, as a high quality Jpeg.
Now open this copy version of the image.
Go to Image – Image Size. Look at the Width, Height and Resolution of your image.Now what’s happening me is that the new copied image will be 1inch wide, 1.5 inches high and a resolution in it’s thousands.
If someone else follows this procedure and their resolution stays the same as the original (probably 72, 300 or 360) and their width and height are just a little bit smaller than the original’s size then I’ll know that it’s just something wrong with my Photoshop.
Thank you all so much for trying to help me by the way.
Joe: Yes, the image will appear normal and big if I view the actual pixels because the resolution has been increase to 6000+ pixels per inch. So all the data, detail and pixels are still there but they are just crammed into a tiny, tiny area.
If I go to ‘View – Print Size’ THAT’S when I see that the image is tiny.
If I use the image for online purposes I won’t notice a problem but if I go to print it that’s when the 1inch by 1.5 inches measurement can be seen.
It might be an idea to try and reset your PS settings to their defaults. Sounds like a setting that is causing an actual crop to size as opposed to crop to ratio.
Hang on a minute..
You are using Photoshop CS…
All this discussion about Height and Width probably applies to CS3 only.
Can you confirm the exact version number you are using?
Cheers
I just reset my Photoshop settings back to their defaults and tried to crop something again.
I cleared the crop boxes, put 2 into the width box, 3 into the height box, selected, cropped, and saved a copy.Opened the new copy and I’m still having the same problem.
: (
I mean it’s not the end of the world.
What I’ve been doing to get around it (once I noticed the problem) has been to select the area with the crop tool, move the blue measurement lines to the edges of the selected crop, select the rectangular marque tool. Pressing “don’t crop” to get rid of the crop’s dotted line selection and then just following the blue line outline with the marque tool to reselect the exact same area.
Then if I go to Image – Crop the area is cropped with no change in resolution or massive changed to width and height.Obviously if I could figure out how to get the crop tool to do it’s job it would be quicker but at least I have another way to do it.
Would using the image size tool get over this? It provides the (default) option to keep the dimensions teh same relative size – ctrl-alt-I. Of course, it won’t crop (doh).
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