quicker way to crop out empty area?

After a small rotation (e.g. 1 degree) and/or lens distortion correction, one usually wants to crop to exclude the empty/transparent area, so that the photo is rectangular again.

To do this, I manually position a crop region just large enough that none of the empty area is included. Usually, I first make a cropping rectangle roughly the right size, then zoom in to fine adjust the edges. This is pretty boring and tedious. Is there a more automatic way?

Hi peter,

Control click that layer.

Good luck,
Ron

"" posted:

Hi peter,

Control click that layer.

Good luck,
Ron

Ron -
That doesn't seem to address the OP's problem. Could you elucidate?

MisterMax
--
..
Travel photos: http://buten.net/max
More photos: http://pbase.com/mistermax

peter wrote:

After a small rotation (e.g. 1 degree) and/or lens distortion correction, one usually wants to crop to exclude the empty/transparent area, so that the photo is rectangular again.

To do this, I manually position a crop region just large enough that none of the empty area is included. Usually, I first make a cropping rectangle roughly the right size, then zoom in to fine adjust the edges. This is pretty boring and tedious. Is there a more automatic way?

Ctrl-click the layer in the palette to make a election, then Image>Crop.

--
Comic book sketches and artwork:
http://www.sover.net/~hannigan/edjh.html
Comics art for sale:
http://www.sover.net/~hannigan/batsale.html

"edjh" wrote in message

peter wrote:

After a small rotation (e.g. 1 degree) and/or lens distortion correction, one usually wants to crop to exclude the empty/transparent area, so that the photo is rectangular again.

To do this, I manually position a crop region just large enough that none of the empty area is included. Usually, I first make a cropping rectangle roughly the right size, then zoom in to fine adjust the edges. This is pretty boring and tedious. Is there a more automatic way?

Ctrl-click the layer in the palette to make a election, then Image>Crop.

Ctrl-click seems to be a short cut for loading the layer mask, i.e. select everything non-transparent.

What I want is to select the largest fixed ratio (e.g. 4:3) rectangular region that fits in the non-transparent area. I imagine if this feature exits, it would be somewhat interactive so the user can specify the aspect ratio, and be allow to move the region around.

"peter" wrote in message

"edjh" wrote in message

peter wrote:

After a small rotation (e.g. 1 degree) and/or lens distortion correction, one usually wants to crop to exclude the empty/transparent area, so that the photo is rectangular again.

To do this, I manually position a crop region just large enough that none of the empty area is included. Usually, I first make a cropping rectangle roughly the right size, then zoom in to fine adjust the edges. This is pretty boring and tedious. Is there a more automatic way?

Ctrl-click the layer in the palette to make a election, then Image>Crop.

Ctrl-click seems to be a short cut for loading the layer mask, i.e. select everything non-transparent.

What I want is to select the largest fixed ratio (e.g. 4:3) rectangular region that fits in the non-transparent area. I imagine if this feature exits, it would be somewhat interactive so the user can specify the aspect ratio, and be allow to move the region around.

set the crop tool to the specific proportion you need?
then only use the corners to resize it

In article <Pkm_h.7365$>, "peter"
wrote:

After a small rotation (e.g. 1 degree) and/or lens distortion correction, one usually wants to crop to exclude the empty/transparent area, so that the photo is rectangular again.

To do this, I manually position a crop region just large enough that none of the empty area is included. Usually, I first make a cropping rectangle roughly the right size, then zoom in to fine adjust the edges. This is pretty boring and tedious. Is there a more automatic way?

Not totally, because it is assumed that such a crop would be subjective in its selection. But here is the best way I have found:

Select the whole image with the crop tool by starting from outside the bounds of the document and ending outside the bounds (with no special keys held down). You can be as sloppy as you want, of course, because it will basically select the whole image when you do this.

Then, from one of the corners, hold down the command-option (or control-alt, if your are on Windows) keys while resizing the crop box. This will resize all four corners at once, keeping the center point constant. Just resize until you have no transparent areas within the crop, hit enter, and you'll be done!

Drew

--
The Mac Orchard - http://www.macorchard.com/
Essential Internet Applications since 1995

On Fri, 04 May 2007 15:37:57 GMT, "peter" wrote:

"edjh" wrote in message

peter wrote:

After a small rotation (e.g. 1 degree) and/or lens distortion correction, one usually wants to crop to exclude the empty/transparent area, so that the photo is rectangular again.

To do this, I manually position a crop region just large enough that none of the empty area is included. Usually, I first make a cropping rectangle roughly the right size, then zoom in to fine adjust the edges. This is pretty boring and tedious. Is there a more automatic way?

Ctrl-click the layer in the palette to make a election, then Image>Crop.

Ctrl-click seems to be a short cut for loading the layer mask, i.e. select everything non-transparent.

What I want is to select the largest fixed ratio (e.g. 4:3) rectangular region that fits in the non-transparent area. I imagine if this feature exits, it would be somewhat interactive so the user can specify the aspect ratio, and be allow to move the region around.

Go to the Adobe Exchange and search for a script named autocropv2.jsx. This script was made to do exactly what you need. It works on CS and CS2, not sure about other versions.

Bye for now.
Bye for now,

George Dingwall

Invergordon, Scotland

http://www.georgedingwall.co.uk