{"id":5211,"date":"2013-09-30T00:01:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T07:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5211"},"modified":"2013-09-28T15:59:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T22:59:53","slug":"cropping-an-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5211","title":{"rendered":"Cropping an Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s one of the most simple photo-editing operations, probably something you may have done with a photograph in the real world. Cropping involves removing a portion of an image, such as using scissors to snip out an unwanted relative or regrettable prom date.
\n
\nForget using scissors on an image on the computer monitor.<\/p>\n

To crop an image you need the image, of course. Plus you need some sort of image-editing program.<\/p>\n

A photo editor is the perfect tool, and it contains a ton of other editing tools that let you fix color problems, red eye, and even swap heads on bodies if you’re good enough. Even a basic picture editor, like the Paint program that comes with Windows, can be used to crop an image.<\/p>\n

To get started, open the image for editing: Locate the image file you want to crop. This may in fact be the most difficult step.<\/p>\n

Once you’ve found the file, right-click its icon and choose the Edit command. Odds are good that image opens in Paint, if not it should open in another image-editing program, probably one with better tools.<\/p>\n

Next, locate the Crop tool. The tool’s common icon is shown in Figure 1, although the icon could be a variation on that basic theme. Select the portion of the image to keep by using the Crop tool. Bingo! You’re done; save the image. Sadly, things don’t work that neatly in the Windows Paint program.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 1. The universal crop tool icon.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Paint you can quickly crop by dragging the bottom and right edges of the canvas, shown in Figure 2. Simple.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 2. Changing the image’s canvas size in Paint.<\/p><\/div>\n

When you need to crop to a central part of the image, however, you need to crop by selecting and then cropping, as illustrated in Figure 3.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 3. Selecting and then cropping the image.<\/p><\/div>\n

First, select the part of the image that you want to keep: Choose the Select tool and drag over that part of the image, similar to what’s shown in Figure 3.<\/p>\n

Don’t mess with the selection! Don’t try to refine or adjust it. If you do, you’ll re-size the image, which isn’t what you want. So if you screw up selection, press Ctrl+Z to undo and then choose the Select tool again to start over.<\/p>\n

To crop out everything but the selected part of the image, click the Crop tool. Thwoop<\/em>! You’re done.<\/p>\n

At this point you can save the cropped image. The end result is something less-embarrassing than an over-scanned image, which was the topic of last week’s Friday blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The crop operation involves removing unwanted portions of an image — like when you overscan a photo or simply want to remove something unsavory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5211"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5256,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211\/revisions\/5256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}