Crop and straighten an image

The Crop tool is one of Photoshop's CC most useful tools, particularly for those of you who take lots of photographs.

You can use it to improve a composition and to straighten crooked photos.

I've opened this photo from the practice files for this tutorial.

So, I can show you the basics of the Crop tool.

I'll start by selecting the Crop tool here in the Tools panel.

As soon as I do, you can see this border around the whole image.

That's the Crop box.

I'll move my cursor over any of the corners or any of the edges of the Crop box and drag to reshape that box.

So, in this case, I might drag it way in to create a very different composition than the original photograph.

As you create your crop, Photoshop CC shows you a preview with the areas to be cropped away shaded in gray.

That way you can evaluate what it is you're about to eliminate before you finalize the crop.

Now, before I finalize this crop, I want to go up to the Options bar to show you an important option there.

And that is Delete Cropped Pixels.

That option is checked by default.

I usually like to uncheck that.

Because when Delete Cropped Pixels is checked, if you finalize the crop and save the image, you'll permanently delete the cropped away pixels.

But, with this option unchecked, you can bring back the cropped away pixels at any time.

Let's give it a try.

I'm going to finalize this crop by going over to the big Checkmark in the Options bar and clicking there.

Now, there are other ways to finalize a crop, but I like this way because it's very simple.

So now you can see the photo with the crop applied.

Let's say that I'm doing something else with the image and then, I change my mind about the way I'd cropped it.

At any time, I can go back and select the Crop tool and then click on the image again, and all the pixels that I cropped away appear back in view and I can change my crop.

This time I might include some of those cropped away pixels.

By the way, you may have noticed that there's a grid of vertical and horizontal lines on top of my photo as I use the Crop tool.

This overlay presents a classic compositional technique known as the rule of thirds.

The idea of this technique is that if you place the important content in an image at the intersection of any of these horizontal and vertical lines you may improve the composition.

Let's give it a try with this image.

I'm going to place the bouquet right at this intersection by clicking on the image and dragging and placing it here.

And then I might reshape the crop boundary a little more, pulling it in tighter on this bouquet.

And then I'll click the Checkmark.

Again, I'm going to click on the image with my Crop tool to try to fine-tune this crop a little more.

I notice that this image is a little crooked, especially down here at the table.

One of the things you can do with the Crop tool is straighten an image.

There are a couple of ways you can do that.

You either can move your cursor outside of one of the corners and manually try to drag to straighten the image, and this grid appears that helps you do that.

I prefer the automatic method.

So, I'm going to undo, that's Command + Z on the Mac, Ctrl + Z on the PC.

So, the image is crooked again and then I'll go up to the Options bar and I'm going to use the automatic straighten tool.

I'll click on that tool to select it in the Options bar for the Crop tool.

I'll move into the image, and then I'm going to click along the edge of this table, hold my mouse down, and drag a little way further along that edge.

Now you don't have to go all the way along with the edge.

Sometimes just a little bit will do the trick, like this.

And Photoshop CC uses your line as a guide to rotate the image so that the content looks straight.

I'm going to fine-tune this crop a little more, maybe bringing up this edge and maybe moving the bouquet over a bit to put it right in the center.

And then I'm going to go up to the Options bar and click the Checkmark to finalize my crop.

So those are some of the basics of the Crop tool.

I hope you give these techniques a try to work on your own compositions in Photoshop CC.