A little cropping is necessary to get a certain aspect ratio. Choose the height at 480, let the other fill in. Choose the rectangular marquee, top left of tool box. Choose the left most box of the four little boxes directly above. On options menu above image, where is says Normal, scroll to Fixed Size. Type in the 480 and 640 appropriately, click anywhere on image and selection lines appear. These denote the exact size you desired. Drag box with cursor or using keyboard arrows to position where desire. Image>Crop.
I could follow all of that except "Choose the left most box of the four little boxes directly above." I don’t see what you mean by that.
O.K. I can see that I’ve confused the issue by using the wall paper example. I thought that would simplify it. I’ll try again.
I take an original digital photograph. There is junk on the right side of the picture that I want to crop out, however, I want to maintain the original proporation of the picture and the original size. I have taken a high enough quality picture that I can do this and still get a quality image.
What I really want to do it crop out the junk on the right side of the picture and make it look like that’s how the picture was taken… same size… same proportions. Sorry for not being clear before.
Choose retangular marquee
Style: Fixed Aspect Ratio
Put Width/Height in there.
My cam is 3:2 for example, same as 35mm.
I think 4:3 is the other most popular digicam aspect ratio? You’ll have to determine what yours is.
Mac
Try using the rectangular marquee tool…. and look at the options bar; reset the "style" to either fixed aspect ratio or fixed size by clicking the down arrow just to the left of the word "normal".
Pete
Choose retangular marquee Style: Fixed Aspect Ratio
Put Width/Height in there.
My cam is 3:2 for example, same as 35mm. I think 4:3 is the other most popular digicam aspect ratio?
You’ll have to determine what yours is.
O.K. I’m close. I’ve got the proportion thing working now.
1) How do I determine if my digital camera is 3:2 or 4:3?
2) How do I make the cropped, properly proportioned image the same size as the original?
Now, how do I make the cropped, properly proportioned image the same size as the original?
Obviously, you can’t make them the same PIXEL size as the original, as you have removed pixels.
If you mean, like same PRINT size as whatever you had the orig set to, simply use Image Size, set one of the dimensions to what you want, with Resample Image: Off.
The other dimension will set naturally as Constrain Proportions is On (and grayed out). The ppi of the image will set naturally using the existing pixels you have left. The more severe the crop you made, the fewer pixels you have to work with and hence the lower the overall ppi at any given print size.
You can also of course experiment with UpSampling to more pixels (generally with neglibible, possibly even detrimental, results).
Mac
f you mean, like same PRINT size as whatever you had the orig set to, simply use Image Size, set one of the dimensions to what you want with Resample Image: Off.
I tried what you suggested and it didn’t do what I was trying to accomplish. What I did do was turn the resample back on and change the pixel size to 2288 x 1712 and that made it the original size. In this case I cropped too much because the image quality suffered significantly.
FG,
The problem here is with the word "size". There is print size and image size (meaning x number of pixels by y number of pixels). They are not the same thing.
If your original was 2288 x 1712 and you cropped some off one side, the pixel dimensions are now (2288 minus the number of pixels you cropped off) x 1712. You have changed the aspect ratio. If you were to draw a box around the original and the cropped image, and only concerned yourself with the outline drawing, the "shape", they’d be different looking rectangles. Since you reduced the width of the rectangle, you must reduce the height of the rectangle to maintain proportions (otherwise you would be just stretching the image horizontally and it would distort).
FG,
I think the easiest way to accomplish maintaining the aspect ratio is:
* choose the rectangular marquee
* use drop down arrow for Style and choose Aspect Ratio
* type 4 in the horizonal (width) box, type 3 in in the vertical height) box * start dragging out a selection box, beginning in the top, left corner. * a 4:3 box will be produced. It will be limited to that aspect ratio, therefore not all of your image will be selected (because you have changed one dimension of it by cropping)
* position the box to include the portion of the image to keep by dragging box around with cursor inside box (you will have ‘extra’ image which cannot be included to compensate for the ‘missing’ part of the image which you cropped off
* go to Image>Crop,now you have a 4:3 image.
FG,
A great site to understand this and many more digital concepts is Wayne Fulton’s site
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http://www.scantips.com>
Read the Intro first. He does a great job of explaining resolution, pixels, etc.
Nancy
I did exactly as you described. Then I resized the cropped image to the original 2288 x 1712. Unfortunately I wanted to only crop about 1/4th of the image. As a result when I resized it the picture was grainy. I understand why that is but at least now I know how to do it when I don’t need to crop so much of the picture.
I will check out the site you suggest. Thanks.
FG: I’m jumping in here a little late….but why exactly did you want to resize to 2288×1712 after the crop? For printing? Otherwise, it’s probably unnecessary and, as you observed, deleterious to image quality…
FG,
Hang in there. Very soon, boom…it will just be crystal clear.
You must be printing out the image each time you do something different to know that it is grainy.
Perhaps you are just stuck on the thought of returning the image to be the original number of pixels x pixels. Banish that thought for printing. This is called upsampling and rarely produces a good quality printed image. For best printed quality, use only the pixels remaining. You have the correct aspect ratio, now just assign a resolution to determine printed physical size of image. Assuming you dragged that rectangle as far as it would go when regaining the aspect ratio…you have the maximum number of original pixels you could retain for the desired aspect ratio.
* Go to Image>Resize>Image Size
* UNCHECK resample box (if you left it checked, you would be interpolating (in this case upsampling) to manufacture more pixels based on a guess by the program) You get the best print by using original pixels, not artifical guessed at pixels.
* type in a desired dimension for the print size. Only type in one dimension, let the program fill in the other dimension. (aspect ratio again coming into play) Should you want a 5 x 7 and you type in 5, if the other dimension fills itself to read 7.5, then you just need to crop of the extra .5 after you allow the resizing.
* *I’m thinking maybe you had the cart before the horse if your objective was to print out images in standard sizes like 5×7 or 8×10.
* after typing in one dimension, both the second dimension AND the resolution change. The larger the dimension, the lower the print resolution. You should get an good print if the resolution number turns up to be 200 ppi or more (some people say about 150). If you are under 150, you can’t print at that size and get decent quality. You will have to print smaller, choose a smaller number for you input dimension. Should the resolution show a number with a decimal, just backspace those decimals off of there (most printers don’t know what to do with a fraction of a pixel) it will make little difference in the size of your print.
Remember to always work on a copy. Save your originals untouched, uncropped, treat them as though they were your negatives. Keep them in a separate folder. Begin an editing session with opening an image and then Image Duplicate, drag title bar of copy down to expose the original and close it to put it back in safe keeping folder.
Has anyone thought about using the crop tool? It can be set to specific dimensions in either pixels or inches, and then all you have to do is crop your picture. The tool will maintain the proper aspect ratio.
FG: I’m jumping in here a little late….but why exactly did you want to resize to 2288×1712 after the crop?
Because after I resized it the image was very small on the screen and I wanted it to be bigger.
My new computer (that I bought so I could handle the images from my new digital camera) came with Dell Image Expert which is made by JASC software so I assume it is similar to their photo album product.
With this product you click a zoom button on the tool bar and the cursor changes to a circle with a plus sign. When you left click on any part of the image it zooms in with that spot in the middle. When you right click it zooms out with that spot in the middle. This is very handy.
When I do this because of the quality of the digital image I can still see it clearly. I was trying to duplicate this type of thing in Elements.
FG,
There are always many ways to do something. As Jim is suggesting, you could also try the Crop Tool.
* Get Crop tool from Tool Box
* type in BOTH of your desired dimensions and units (example: 5 in and 7 in) * DO NOT type in a resolution (after cropping you will check to see what resolution it came out to be, and if it is a high enough res. for printing, if you type in the res. from the beginning, you very well might be upsampling and will not be aware of it, upsampling=less than great quality
* Drag the crop box beginning at left top
* hit Enter
* under Image Size, check the resolution of the image
You must be printing out the image each time you do something different to know that it is grainy
Nancy
I haven’t even tried printing yet. I’m still struggling with display. 🙂 See my post just above for an explanation of what I’m trying to accomplish. Thanks for trying to help.
FG,
The size an image appears on the screen has no resemblance to reality. It does not reflect the printed size of an image. It is merely a zoom factor.
FG,
If you use the Ctrl key and either the plus or minus sign, you will see your image shrink or enlarge
Has anyone thought about using the crop tool? It can be set to specific dimensions in either pixels or inches, and then all you have to do is crop your picture. The tool will maintain the proper aspect ratio.
Thanks Jim! That worked even easier than the other way. 🙂
If you use the Ctrl key and either the plus or minus sign, you will see your image shrink or enlarge
O.K. I see that now. Another issue cleared up. Thanks! I’ll get there with the help of all you great folks.
With this product you click a zoom button on the tool bar and the cursor changes to a circle with a plus sign. When you left click on any part of the image it zooms in with that spot in the middle. When you right click it zooms out with that spot in the middle. This is very handy.
I see now that Elements has the same type of tool. The difference is that when you right click instead of zooming back out it gives you a menu with a number of choices. This makes it more feature rich but less convienient. The cntrl plus and minus works well but it doesn’t allow you to adjust the center the way the zoom tool does.
FG,
You can do that too.
With the maginifying glass selected in the tool box, just drag a small box around area of interest and let go
