Pausing an action to select the right crop

JD
Posted By
JC Dill
Jul 21, 2004
Views
1345
Replies
5
Status
Closed
I need to crop a large folder full of rectangular images to square. I can’t just do this automatically, I’ll have to adjust the crop because if there are 2 people in the image I’ll move the crop to one side or the other to get one person alone rather than 2 chopped faces. Or if it’s a portrait orientation, I’ll probably move the crop up, etc.

I can’t find a way to get the action to pause *mid-crop*. It either pauses before drawing the crop (which means I’ll have to hand draw each and every crop, even when the default crop would have worked just fine), or it pauses after cropping.

Am I trying to get it to do something it just wont do?

PS7 on Win XP.

Thanks!

jc

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O
Odysseus
Jul 21, 2004
In article <ACmLc.3408$>,
JC Dill wrote:

I need to crop a large folder full of rectangular images to square. I can’t just do this automatically, I’ll have to adjust the crop because if there are 2 people in the image I’ll move the crop to one side or the other to get one person alone rather than 2 chopped faces. Or if it’s a portrait orientation, I’ll probably move the crop up, etc.
I can’t find a way to get the action to pause *mid-crop*. It either pauses before drawing the crop (which means I’ll have to hand draw each and every crop, even when the default crop would have worked just fine), or it pauses after cropping.

Am I trying to get it to do something it just wont do?

Photoshop’s cropping, like its transformations, seems very ‘modal’, in that you can’t do much of anything else (except display the Info palette) once starting the operation.

How much variation is there in the size of the crops you want to make? If it’s typically just a matter of removing the ‘gnomon’ from one edge of the rectangle or another to leave a square, you might be able to use the Canvas Size command instead. But while using the Crop tool, are you aware that there are options for constraining it to a given proportion or pixel dimensions? Another possibility is to use the Rectangular Marquee tool (which has similar constraining options) followed by the Crop command.


Odysseus
JD
JC Dill
Jul 22, 2004
Odysseus wrote:

But while using the Crop tool, are you
aware that there are options for constraining it to a given proportion or pixel dimensions?

That constrains the *results*, but it doesn’t fix the problem that I need to stop the action "mid-crop" to place the crop area appropriately for each image.

The source images are rectangles, in both landscape and portrait orientations. They are in a variety of sizes. Some of them are zoomed in on one person, others include several people.

I need to crop so that each one is a square image, of just one person. The resulting image only needs to be 100 pixels by 100 pixels, so the crop will be resizing down (e.g. cropping a square from a 600×800 pixel image and then downsizing to 100×100 pixels), but it will be resizing different amounts depending on how big the source image was and how much of the image is kept or discarded in the crop by my hand-placement of the crop edges.

Another possibility is to use the Rectangular
Marquee tool (which has similar constraining options) followed by the Crop command.

Can you explain how this would work in my case?

Thanks!

jc
PW
Pjotr Wedersteers
Jul 22, 2004
JC Dill wrote:

Another possibility is to use the Rectangular
Marquee tool (which has similar constraining options) followed by the Crop command.

Can you explain how this would work in my case?

Thanks!

jc

Simple, record the action with the rectangular marquee tool and after making the marquee the right square size (hold shift) select crop from the image menu. You know how to make the action pause between steps so that shouldn’t be too hard. Moving the square selection about simply by dragging it or using arrow keys.
HTH
Pjotr
JD
JC Dill
Jul 22, 2004
Pjotr Wedersteers wrote:

JC Dill wrote:

Another possibility is to use the Rectangular
Marquee tool (which has similar constraining options) followed by the Crop command.

Can you explain how this would work in my case?

Thanks!

jc

Simple, record the action with the rectangular marquee tool and after making the marquee the right square size (hold shift) select crop from the image menu. You know how to make the action pause between steps so that shouldn’t be too hard.

Well, maybe I don’t. Because I still can’t get it to LET ME CHANGE THE SELECTION. ARUGH. 🙁

Moving the square selection about simply by dragging it or using arrow keys.

When the action stops I get a message with two button choices, continue or stop. While the action is stopped I can not change the selection. Continue accepts the already selected part of the image, and stop stops the action (aborts the action). How do I configure my action to stop and *let me do something* at that point, before it continues?

Thanks!!!!

jc (the frustrated!)
J
jenelisepasceci
Jul 23, 2004
JC Dill wrote:

Pjotr Wedersteers wrote:

JC Dill wrote:

Another possibility is to use the Rectangular
Marquee tool (which has similar constraining options) followed by the Crop command.

Can you explain how this would work in my case?

Thanks!

jc

Simple, record the action with the rectangular marquee tool and after making the marquee the right square size (hold shift) select crop from the image menu. You know how to make the action pause between steps so that shouldn’t be too hard.

Well, maybe I don’t. Because I still can’t get it to LET ME CHANGE THE SELECTION. ARUGH. 🙁

Moving the square selection about simply by dragging it or using arrow keys.

When the action stops I get a message with two button choices, continue or stop. While the action is stopped I can not change the selection. Continue accepts the already selected part of the image, and stop stops the action (aborts the action). How do I configure my action to stop and *let me do something* at that point, before it continues?
Make two actions. The first creates a fixed size rectangular selection, which you can move around as you like, the second does the cropping and resizing.
Peter

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