Photoshop Elements: Crop an Image

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Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6

March 4, 2008

Sometimes your photo is not quite right. Maybe there is too much distraction in the background or foreground, or the central figures are too high or too low in the photo. It just doesn't look right. You can often fix that by cropping your image to place the focus where you want it.

In this image from the Bristol race track, there is too much track in the foreground. The cropped image puts the focus on the cars where it belongs.

Before After
Orginal image before cropping Cropped image

To crop a photo:

  1. Open the image you want to crop.
  2. Click or press C to select the Crop tool.

  3. In the options bar, set the crop options you want:

    1. Most of the time, the default aspect ratio of No Restrictions will work just fine. This allows you to crop the photo to any shape or size you want.
    2. You can select a different aspect ratio from the drop-down list, or enter a custom width, height, or resolution for your crop.

  4. Click-and-hold where you want the top left corner of the crop to begin. Then, drag to where you want the crop to end and release the mouse button. The cropped area will be highlighted and the area outside the crop dimmed.

    Crop box

  5. If necessary, adjust the cropped area

    1. Click-and-drag inside the cropped area to reposition the cropped area on the photo.
    2. Click-and-drag on any of the handles on the crop box to change the size and shape of the cropped area.
  6. Click OK or press Enter to complete the crop. If you selected No Restrictions for the aspect ratio, your cropped image will be cropped with the same resolution as the original photo.

Tips

  • Do you want the cropped area of your photo to have the same proportions as the original photo? Use the No Restrictions aspect ratio option. Click-and-drag the crop box to cover the entire photo, then press Shift and click-and-drag a crop box corner handle to resize the crop box to the desired size. Pressing Shift constrains the crop box to the same proportions when it is resized.
  • You can also use the Use Photo Ratio aspect ratio to preserve the original ratio, but it can be tricky. After you draw the crop box, you must remove the width and height to leave those fields blank on the options bar. You can change, but not remove the resolution. Otherwise, when committed, the cropped area is resized to the exact same width, size and resolution as the original. This causes the cropped area to degrade in quality because it is upsampled; that is, pixels are added to the image to get the required resolution. It may look fuzzy.
  • Are you cropping for the Web? Change the resolution to 72 pixels/inch for Web images.
  • Do you want to print a standard photo? Use one of the set photo aspect ratios such as 4x6 in, but leave the Resolution box blank. When the photo is cropped, Photoshop Elements will determine the correct resolution for the cropped area.

Updated on May 24, 2008