Well, I am feeling a little dense this morning, so maybe somebody else will read this post and understand more clearly what you’re trying to do! Crop I understand, but I don’t understand "on the other side." But, I’m going to assume that you have one image and you want to crop two separate areas of it and make it into two images.
Personally, I don’t use the crop tool. Try this and see if you get the results you’re after.
Open your original image on the desktop and immediately go to Image>Duplicate Image – twice – and make two copies. Close the original. (I’m a fanatic about never working on the original!)
Select the Rectagular Marquee tool, draw an outline around the portion of the first duplicate image that you want to keep. Then Image>Crop. There’s your first cropped picture. Now do the same thing on the second copy. There’s your second cropped picture. Is that what you needed?
I don’t like using the Crop tool, because it requires verifying each time that you’ve got any settings turned off that would give you a resampling. That’s why I prefer cropping with the Rectangular Marquee. (I know you didn’t ask, but I decided to volunteer!)
If you haven’t gotten the instructions you need to complete your project, please repost, either with a little more detail or – with luck – somebody whose brain is firing on all cyclinders will see your message next time! 🙂
Duo Maxwell,
Here is how I would handle this task of taking "pieces" of a picture and assembling a new picture from those pieces;
First open the picture and then pull the layers palette out of the well by clicking and holding on the layers file tab.
Using rectangular or oval OR any selection tool… select first area you want on the picture.
Then click "Layer/New/Layer Via copy". (this will create a new layer with only the selection)
Click on the background (original) image in the layers palette…. (Don’t forget this step or you will get a message that no pixels are selected or you may create a blank layer)
Go to the next area you wish to use and so on until you have them all.
Now open a new canvas (file/new and make it the same size as the image you are working with as well as the same resolution.
Position this canvas on the left side of your screen and the layers palette on the right.
Now one at a time click on the layers thumbnails, hold, and drag them on to your blank canvas.
Get them roughly where you want them then close the original picture. You can adjust the location of your selections by clicking on that layer in the layers palette, then using the arrow keys to move around or click hold and drag.
Pete
"Beth Haney" wrote in message
I don’t like using the Crop tool, because it requires verifying each time that you’ve got any settings turned off that would give you a resampling.
Can you elaborate on this? In what situations would the crop tool cause resampling?
The reason I ask is that I had no idea that the crop tool would cause resampling, and agree with you that this would be undesirable. I don’t want cropping to make any other changes other than to just trim the image. If you can elaborate, that will help me avoid those situations.
Thanks!
Pete
Pete Duniho: The Crop tool will any time you set a resolution in the toolbar and also if you set a width, height and resolution. As a matter of fact, if you set just width and height, you also can wind up with resampling. If you want to avoid resampling but crop an image to a particular aspect ratio, use the Marquee tool.
Chuck
Pete: That should have said "The Crop tool will "resample" any time…not all here today, I’m afraid…
Chuck
Hi Chuck,
Haven’t talked to you in a while…either means I’m getting smarter or I don’t know I’m getting dumber.
Anyhoo, I use the crop tool quite a bit and can’t remember getting mixed up with any "Resampling". Whenever I see that word I side track around it and do something else ’cause I’m not all knowing about what it does.
Marty
Hi, Marty! I know you’re still here; I see your wonderful submissions to the Challenge and your encouraging comments about the entries of others….
The resampling is very subtle; it never takes you to a screen where it asks you if you want it. But when you specify a certain size and/or resolution, then draw a box around part of your image, the program has no choice but to add (or subtract) pixels to meet your specifications. Unless you do some really wild stuff – like specifying a resolution of 600 pixels per inch, a 10 inch by 14 inch image and then crop a small corner of your picture as your new image, you won’t see the impact – at least not on the screen. It might affect your prints if it’s extreme; but if you’re only doing some modest cropping, even the prints won’t be that negatively affected. But I stick with the rectangular marquee, because I can control exactly what it does and I like that.
Have a great weekend; get in some good horseback riding for those of us who just ride pickup trucks!
🙂
Chuck
Marty, same here.
I use the crop tool regular and haven’t noticed anything change before and after the cropping. What should I look out for?
Robert
Robert, you probably won’t see any real effects on the screen, but if you specify a resolution when cropping, you may see some effects in the print (some loss of sharpness, perhaps) if you’ve cropped down to a small portion of the original image. But for modest cropping (chopping off say 10 percent of an image to achieve a certain width-to-height ratio), it shouldn’t be noticeable. You just need to be aware that the potential for resampling is there when using the Crop tool, and check the before and after image size to make sure it hasn’t been severe.
Chuck
Thank you chuck.
So far I have not been doing much with defining resolutions or image sizes. I am still at the stage where I work from the screen; what I see is what I get kind of thing.
I crop straight from the screen so to speak, there for I didn’t notice any changes in the quality of the images: I will bear your comments in mind.
Robert
Robert, I happened to be looking up cropping in the Photoshop 7.0 Help to answer another question, and here’s what it says about the Crop tool:
"(Photoshop) To crop the image without resampling (default), make sure that all the text boxes in the options bar are empty. You can click the Clear button to quickly clear all text boxes.
(Photoshop) To resample the image during cropping, enter a height, width, and/or resolution in the options bar."
As it’s the same Crop tool in PE2, the above applies.
Chuck
While we’re talking about the crop tool, I notice that I can never undo a crop once I click "enter." Is it supposed to be irreversible even before saving?
CHUCK,
Thank you and others for giving me food for thought. I think, to be safe, I’ll avoid cropping with the crop tool. I have noticed a differenc but it was never great so I didn’t question it. Goodness, I sure don’t need to lose any ‘quality’.
Thanks too for looking at my stuff. You wouldn’t believe the hours I put into it and yet the results look so simple. Someday I hope to do an image in less than ???? hours.
Marty
Barbara,
Crop can be UnDone like any other function on my PSE 1 &2.
PeteD
Crop can be UnDone like any other function on my PSE 1 &2.
Hmm, I was afraid of that. This is one of those mysterious things that has always dogged me with PE2. Trashing prefs seems to put it back for one use only,then it’s back to being irrevocable again. Anyone have any idea of what else I should be checking for, possible conflicts or anything?
Maybe I’m not following the conversation closely enough, but going back in the history palette prior to the crop negates the crop, or using Escape (in Windows anyway).
I know it’s supposed to, Nancy, but when I use the crop tool, a lot of the time the history palette is empty afterwards. That’s the problem.
Sorry Barbara, I didn’t understand the full extent of the problem.
