What Everybody Ought to Know About Crop Tool
Crop tool is one of the most often used tools in Photoshop. In this post we will see what we can do with this tool.
1. Use Crop Tool to crop an image.
The process of photo editing is almost always starts with cropping, it is one of the most wide-spread operations of post-process. Choose a Crop Tool from the tool palette on the left (picture on the right). Frame the image as you like and rotate it. To rotate a selected zone, find the place beyond the frame, where the cursor has a look of a two-way bow-shaped arrow, click on this place and drag the frame (picture below). To finish cropping click on the crop tool icon, or right click and choose ‘crop’.
Note! If you selected an area for cropping, but don’t want to continue cropping, cancel the operation: 
- by clicking on the Cancel icon in the top right-hand corner.
- or choose any other tool from the tool panel and choose Don’t Crop in the window appeared.
2. Use Crop Tool to create an image of a standard size (5 x 7 in, 8 x 10 in, etc.).
Click on the Crop Tool icon. Set the Width and Height of a frame in the Option palette in the top left-hand corner (look at the picture above). Now select an area for cropping. Notice that no matter what size of a frame is, a cropped image will be of a chosen size (in our case it is 5 x 7 in). You can move the frame in any part of an image. Finish cropping as described in point 1.
Note!
- When you cropping is over, settings in Width and Height fields remain, to clear them up, choose Clear option in the same panel.
- Photoshop chooses inches a default units for width and height setting, if you want to change it, go to Edit-Preferences-Units & Rulers and choose any other unit from the Rulers List.
3. Preset sizes for Crop Tool.
Click on Crop Tool icon. Choose Winsow – Tool Preset. In Options Palette set width, height and resolution and then click on Create a new tool preset and type its name in the window appeared. Click OK and you will see a new preset in the Tool Presets Window. When you want to use a tool preset, activate a crop tool and click on the last button on the left of Options Palette and choose a desired preset.
- To change the name of a Preset, double click on it and type a new name.
- To change the order of your presets, go to Edit - Preset Manager-Tools. Drag a preset to an appropriate place.
- If you want to delete any crop preset, drag it to a recycle bin in the bottom right-hand corner of Tool Presets window.
- If you want to see saved presets for other tools, uncheck Current Tool Only in the bottom left-hand corner of the window.
4. Use Crop Tool to create two photos of the same size and resolution.
If you already have an image of ideal size and resolution and you want another image to have the same measurements, use the first one as an example. First open the image you want to crop and then your example photo. Click on Crop Tool icon and choose Front Image from the option palette. Photoshop will automatically change all settings for crop tool. You will have to make selection and crop the second image.
5. Use Crop Tool to enlarge canvas size (i.e. create white zone around your image).
First make sure that your image doesn’t occupy the whole window and there is some space around it. Make a selection of any size and then move a pointer beyond the image so that the frame covers grey area around the image. Finish cropping.
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