CROPPING The most effective way to improve a photograph is to crop out just the most interesting part. If your digital camera is set to take the largest and best quality images possible, cropping out a portion of the photo will still leave you with an image that will make a good quality print, and it will also make the subject(s) of your photo larger and easier to see. In the photo at the right, all the action takes place on the left side of the photograph, so we're going to crop and save just that portion of the image. If you plan to make prints of your photos, make sure you crop a rectangle that matches the shape of the print you want. Exact proportions aren't necessary; as long as you leave a little around the edges of the part you want, when it's printed it can be recropped to fit the paper size without losing anything important. Cropping is easy. Just make a rectangular selection around the part of the photo you want to keep. Then from the Image menu choose Crop. Notice how the photo is now much more dramatic. Also, notice how we left room around the sides and bottom of the players so that if the photo needs to be cropped some more to fit the print size desired, we won't lose anything interesting. Let's look at another photo that definitely needs to be cropped ... This is not a very good photograph. It has no clear subject. However, the people on the bottom right all by themselves might make a good photograph if we cropped them out. Remember, if your digital camera takes huge images, you can crop out parts that will make good prints. From one photograph of a group of people, by itself not very exciting, you can sometimes get two or three good prints by cropping out the interesting parts. Below is the new picture obtained by cropping. It's much more interesting. However, the mother's hair has fallen over her face; the photo might be improved by getting rid of those errant strands of hair. As you'll learn later, you can remove objects from a photo that you don't want. We removed the hair, below is the final result. Using Photoshop Computers | Science & Math | Worsley School