Your best photos are full of CROP!

Please don't take offense, I said Crop and not Crap.

The crop tool is one of the easiest tools to use technically but one of the hardest to use emotionally for those of use that don't like to throw anything out. In Photoshop here is what it looks like:



and in Corel PhotoPaint


As you can see they both look alike and I would imagine that in whatever photo editing software you are using it will look the same/similar.

Using it is easy. Here is how to do it in Photoshop but I would imagine its similar in other photo editing software as well.

1. Click on the crop tool.

2. Place your cursor over the photo and LEFT click with your mouse and hold it down.

3. Drag it over the part of the photo you want to save.

4. Then let go of the mouse.

In this photo you can see it has left an area highlighted that I can enlarge or reduce by grabbing one of those little squares.


5. Finally hit the enter key and the photo is cropped.

Landscapes probably need the least amount of cropping. People shots probably need the most.

Here is a so so photo of a guy on a bench.


and here he is cropped-It's much more dramatic.


Here is a scene that shows the whole picture


But if I were to print it out to hang on my wall(which I'm going to do) I'd crop it down and use this version. Its much more striking.


The crop tool can take a so so picture and make it good
and it can take a good picture and make it better.

Class dismissed, now go have a nice crop.

Plates???