Monday, March 26, 2007

Cropping

original photo same photo cropped


One of the very best "enhancement" technique for a new digital photopgrapher(and experienced ones, and film photographer as well) is the simple method of trimming out unnecessary parts of the image, a technique know as cropping.



How you do it is very simple you just selecet a smaller area of the photo, normally using the mouse to drag out or reposition a selection rectangle. The cropping tools in software varies a lot, and here I am using picasa. Even photo kiosk at the photo processor will offer cropping and it can both make an artstic difference (by improving composition) and avoid chopping off peoples heads (when those machines "crop to fit" the usually centralize the portion to display). Some cameras even have a cropping feature. If you have tried you systems cropping tool yet, do an experiment get two of three ok photos and cropp them, print them out and show them around. See how many peope realise they are even the same photo.

Finally a work of warning, remember the size pou want to print, and crop to this size. Good software these days will autoresize your selection box to match that aspect ratio. If there are strong artistic/composition reasons, to go to other sizes remember you will probably have to it print larger and use the scissors on the print

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