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Cropping
What's the best way to crop a picture?
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Let's suppose you took the picture at left of the just-about-ready-to-fall-asleep cat. You may be happy with the picture, but you notice the cat's head is pretty much dead-center in the frame, and wonder if the composition can be improved by cropping.
You would like to make your picture look better, but how do you crop it to its best advantage? How do you know what to eliminate and what to keep?
There are many ways to crop a picture, depending on the effect you wish to achieve - that is, what you wish to emphasize, even in a simple picture like this one.
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TRY CROPPING IT IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT WAYS
The first to try is to crop in tightly - really close to the cat, to emphasize that it is your subject, elminating all extraneous items in the background and foreground - as shown on the right. It seems to work, but is this the best cropping treatment for this image? Ask yourself, should the stone wall the cat is resting on be cropped out so much? Is the remaining small amount of rock distracting or confusing? Should the flowers next to the cat in the original picture be removed? Is the picture really improved by such tight cropping?
The answer is "Yes" and "No." Yes, if you want a close-up pet portrait with no distracting influences, and want to show your pet in a peaceful, semi-alert state, either about ready to nod off or just awakening. No, if you want to achieve the best composition.
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Tightly-cropped, the cat is all that is permitted in the frame.
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Cropped a little more loosely, more elements are shown. Is this a better pet portrait?
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Our second attempt at cropping shows more of the stone wall in the foreground and a little more of the background. It seems to give some breathing room when compared with the tightly-cropped image above - adding dimension that helps to show the subject better, while still eliminating a lot of unnecessary detail from the original picture.
The image on the left has more foreground and background than the one above, while retaining the importance of the cat as the subject. It is a well-cropped picture that exhibits good composition.
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By cropping to make the image appear to have been photographed as a vertical image (portrait versus landscape mode), more background is included, and the image takes on the dimensions of a more rectangular picture rather than a square look. This allows you to retain a sense of depth and three-dimensionality while cropping in tighter on the cat's sides, making it appear larger.
This is a good cropping technique to try, but if the additional background doesn't help the composition, why do it? Why? Because you may need to frame the picture vertically to fit into a display. Because you may need open space above the subject for a title or other text if it is, for example, to be used as a magazine cover or the title image in a slide show. Or, simply because you like it. (There is no one best cropping method, and what you like should be the determining factor.)
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Cropping so that the image takes on a more vertical look can sometimes produce a better picture.
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Our fourth attempt at cropping includes a bit more of the stone wall, but the big difference is the inclusion of the small bunch of flowers on the image's left. Note the sense of balance that seems to happen between the positioning of the flowers and the cat. The cat's face is also placed in the image so that it is, more or less, in keeping with the Rule of thirds, which generally helps to make a picture more pleasing.
Cropped like this, the picture seems to be well-composed and is pleasing to view. Our preference for cropping the original picture would be the way the image is shown here. We like the balance and the interplay between the two elements - flowers and cat - but your needs and tastes may call for a different cropping. Ultimately, only you will know what cropping method suits your purposes best.
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Have a look at this image, on the right, cropped in two different ways. Which is the more effective?
We can't really say, since we don't know what the photographer's intentions are for the picture. We have a preference for the one on the left better as a stand-alone image. But, only the photographer (or his or her client) can say how best this picture should be cropped to illustrate the message it is meant to convey.
For information on Photoshop's image-editing tools for digital image files, see Toolbox for image-editing.
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How you decide to crop a picture is largely personal, just as how you decide to photograph it is. Is the picture on the left better cropped than the one on the right? Yes and no. It depends on how you wish to use it and what you want it to say.
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