Croppings Your Photos the Right Way

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Community/ColumnsArticles/TechTips/tech-2004-02-07.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Community/ColumnsArticles/TechTips/tech-2004-02-07.htm</a><br /><br /></div>"Want to make your cropped digital photos better every time? Because cropping is one of the most common editing tasks in digital photography, these three quick tips will come in handy over and over in the future. Use the rule of thirds...this is a simple photo composition rule that helps create dynamic tension between your subject and setting while also keeping them in harmony with each other. This effect is achieved by framing photos to bring the setting into greater prominence by moving your subject away from the center of your photo. Doing this helps force your audience to move their eyes through the entire composition and give it a fuller appreciation."<br /><br />Although I'm befuddled when it comes to white balance and exposure, I'm a great cropper. ;-) I try to frame my shots the way I want them, but sometimes a hurried shot just doesn't get the right framing, so cropping is an essential tool. This is also one of the better arguments for needing a high mexapixel count: the more pixels you have in your image, the more you can afford to lose when you crop it and get the image you want at a decent print quality. One of the things I like about <a href="http://www.picasa.net">Picasa</a> is that it has cropping tools for common photo sizes (4x6, 5x7, 8x10) with locked aspect ratios, so it makes it easy to crop your images to prepare them for printing. That's not to say that you should be sloppy about framing your pictures, relying on a crop to fix them later, but more pixels is always a good thing. ;-)

[James Fee]

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements do the same thing, but I totally agree with you on why its so important.

[Lotto]

Just to add a note...I always keep the original. If I crop or change a picture in anyway, I add an 'a' on the end of the name and save it in the same folder.

[Deemo]

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements do the same thing, but I totally agree with you on why its so important.

Yep...in Elements you just specify the dimensions in inches or cms and it looks the crop to it.
Very easy!

[Jason Dunn]

Just to add a note...I always keep the original. If I crop or change a picture in anyway, I add an 'a' on the end of the name and save it in the same folder.

Great idea! I used to do that, but with Picasa I wasn undo all changes to the images (it keeps an original copy in a hidden subfolder), so I don't have to worry about that any longer. ;-)

[Crocuta]

Just to add a note...I always keep the original. If I crop or change a picture in anyway, I add an 'a' on the end of the name and save it in the same folder.

Great idea! I used to do that, but with Picasa I wasn undo all changes to the images (it keeps an original copy in a hidden subfolder), so I don't have to worry about that any longer. ;-)

Wow, that would just scare the heck out of me. :eek: Even though it sounds like a cool feature, and I'm not sure I'm being completely rational about it :silly:, I'm just way too much of a control freak to let a program hide away my originals. I do exactly what Lotto does and add letters to the name. That way I'm always clear about exactly where the photos are in my folder hierarchy so I'm sure they're getting properly backed-up and all. While I want to be able to use the program to find my photos, I don't want to have to use the program to find my photos.

The article about cropping is a good one that newer photographers need to keep in mind. We all want to compose our photos perfectly in the camera if we can, but reality has a way of rearing its ugly head for many photographic situations. In the old days, we used to have cropping masks that we'd lay over the slides, then we'd mark the crops on the paper mounts for the crop that accompanied the production of the internegative. Now, it's great to be able to tweak that image in many different ways in post. Not only is it easier to find the image you thought you were getting originally, but it opens additional avenues for creativity.

[Deemo]

I think Adobe keeps a hidden file with the original.

The girl that was on Screensavers on TechTV (she's now on Call For Help) had her friend take an artsey shot of her smoking a cigarette with her top off.

She cropped out her boobs and posted it on her Blog.

A few nerds recovered the original from that file and it started showing up all over the internet - boobs and all.

[Jason Dunn]

I think Adobe keeps a hidden file with the original.

Holy crap. 8O It keeps the original INSIDE the cropped file? That's clever in some ways, but insane in others as Kat found out. Wow. 8O

(please, no one post links to it)

[Deemo]

Well I was going to ask if I could post it.....art or porno....don't get me started.
Anyone can search on Cat Schwartz blog (or topless) and get it.

Here is a clip for the technical detail from one site that has the pics

"Now for the fun part! Photoshop generates small preview images for the pics it produces and hides them in the original image. If you change the image drastically, the preview thumbnail is changed too. But if you don't make a major change, and instead just crop the picture and resave it under the original file name, the preview thumbnail stays the sameand reflects not what your image currently lloks like but instead what the original looked like. So if you (or Cat, in this case) took some topless photos and then cropped your boobies out, unless you changed the filename the original topless pics would remain as the thumbnail. The ones above don't work because I resized them to save space and bandwidth, but the pics below give you an idea of what I'm talking about."

[Deemo]

And another possibly more educated explanation that differs from the author above:

"For the record, the author of this page is likely mistaken about at least one thing. It was probably the digital camera, not Photoshop, that embedded the thumbnail preview in the image.

Thumbnail previews are part of the EXIF metadata that all digital cameras embed into JPEG files. Incidentally, EXIF information and metadata is increasingly becoming a concern for professional photographers working in digital because it can potentially expose information (such as shooting conditions, or ...ahem... other things) that the photographer does not want to be revealed. However, using EXIF editing software, it's possible to strip out this embedded information. Photoshop's Save for Web command also strips out extra metadata and thumbnail previews automatically.

In addition, I was not able to reproduce this behavior in Photoshop 7 using my own digital camera photos. The site quoted above does not mention what version of Photoshop was used to crop these images (in fact, it's unclear whether Photoshop was actually used for the cropping), but it appears that this quirk has been corrected, at least in Photoshop 7.01. If you know what versions of Photoshop can reproduce this behavior, please use the discussion link below to post in the forum. I'm interested to know."

Anyone know the truth on this one?

[Jason Dunn]

"For the record, the author of this page is likely mistaken about at least one thing. It was probably the digital camera, not Photoshop, that embedded the thumbnail preview in the image..."

I think this makes the most sense myself, but whatever tool she used to do the crop and then export it should have destroyed the EXIF data - at least, in this instance that's what you'd want, but quite often you want to keep the EXIF data. Quite an interesting issue!

Does anyone know a good software tool for viewing the EXIF thumbnails?

[James Fee]

Holy crap. 8O It keeps the original INSIDE the cropped file? That's clever in some ways, but insane in others as Kat found out. Wow. 8O

(please, no one post links to it)
No, not actually. What Photoshop Album does is rename the changed file to "filename" - edited.jpg and removes the original file from the database, leaving it in the folder on the hard drive. I wouldn't call that hidden, just missing. 8O

[Crocuta]

Holy crap. 8O It keeps the original INSIDE the cropped file? That's clever in some ways, but insane in others as Kat found out. Wow. 8O

(please, no one post links to it)
No, not actually. What Photoshop Album does is rename the changed file to "filename" - edited.jpg and removes the original file from the database, leaving it in the folder on the hard drive. I wouldn't call that hidden, just missing. 8O

Yeah, I guess we're really talking about two different things here: what your catalog software does with originals when you edit the image, and how thumbnails get saved in the EXIF metadata for some editors/cameras (seems to be some debate about which). Both are really important to know about, and I guess just part of the learning curve of moving from an analog to a digital photography world.

I just bought Photoshop Album and hadn't checked out anything about what it does for altering images yet. I can live with what you describe because it leaves my original untouched. I guess I don't care that it removes it from the catalog as long as it leaves it alone on the disk. I trust it will have some option to revert to the original somewhere. (It should.)

On Cat's little problem :lol: , I think the guy that talked about the camera must be right. I checked the documentation for Photoshop, and the only thing it talks about for EXIF is using it for storing the color space. Nothing mentioned Photoshop storing a thumbnail in a jpg. Of course, it does have the option of doing so with a .psd, but that's fully configurable.

My guess is that the camera stored the thumbnail and Photoshop (if it was even the editor) just left it alone. Like Jason, I'd like to find an EXIF editor now that I know there's more there than just the basics. I know the ThumbsPlus viewer I mentioned in another thread shows the EXIF data, though I don't remember if it lets you remove it. Photoshop Album also lets you view it, though you can only change a few things like date and time.

It does go to show, you really do need to know what you're doing.

[James Fee]

It does go to show, you really do need to know what you're doing.
Since when has that stopped any of us? :drinking:

[Crocuta]

It does go to show, you really do need to know what you're doing.
Since when has that stopped any of us? :drinking:

Yeah, it sure didn't stop Cat! :beer: