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Reverse Cropping

Lesson 3 from: Canvas Size and Cropping in Photoshop CC

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

3. Reverse Cropping

Next Lesson: Canvas Size

Lesson Info

Reverse Cropping

here is another image that we are going Teoh use. Um Teoh recomposed this scene in a very different way and actually extend the canvas a little bit. Okay, so we're going to do some reverse cropping here, so let's just go back. Teoh. I mean, and also, when you have with and heightened resolution, you can also freestyle. This is also like a freestyle size, so we could free style it. But if I'm in the mode of freestyling, usually what I want to do is maintain the original ratio. So I'm gonna actually cancel out of that. And we'll just keep the original ratio here and we'll freestyle this a little it. Okay, so now we're going to talk about what these settings here are for. We'll leave delete cropped pixels for now, and we'll talk about content aware. So if I want to extend this canvas So now I'm reverse cropping right? Instead of cutting into the picture, I'm essentially enlarging the picture. If I leave content aware off and I just go ahead and click check, I'm going to get a fill of what...

ever my background is. So I happened. Have white for my backgrounds. Watch right now. So Photoshopped filled this in with White, and that's fine. And now I could fill it in with something else, or I could I mean, I could manually painted or clone it or whatever, but another option is to turn on content aware and content aware is gonna let me. I'm not gonna go so far because it just might take a minute to render, so we'll just extend it slightly. And then when I go ahead and hit the check, Mark photo shop is gonna do some math. Did not, uh, and fill it in and it didn't do it quite perfect. So there, and, you know, when I was testing this sometimes that we get it perfect, sometimes it wouldn't. That's one of the things about content aware fill is It's kind of a little aber Cadavra, and sometimes you go striking African ever. So in this case, I would just get, like, the healing brush or something, and just hell over this, and that's going to take a minute to render. There we go. There's another funny spot right there. Maybe something like that. All right, so now I think that's looking pretty good. So Now, if we needed to add some text to this or build some composite or whatever, we would be ready to go. And that was all just with the crop tool. Okay, so all we did to make that happen. Waas grabbed the crop tool. I kept it to original ratio. And I put a check mark here for content aware, and then I just drag outwards. So any time that we're dragging outwards, we have the option of utilising content aware to fill in the difference. And this is essentially extending the canvas. So you're you're enlarging your image area. Basically, it's like building in addition on your house. That's how I like to think of it Onley way less messy and far less expensive. If you've ever done that woo, that could be pricey. Okay, let's look at another example. Well, look at this image here, maybe. Yep, There we go. All right, So here is the image that we were gonna make into a book cover. So in this case, we're not merely extending the canvas just for the sake of re composing it like this. We are actually going Teoh reform at this image from a horizontal image into a vertical. So in this case, original ratio is not gonna work. Because, um, I can't. If I drag up like this, it's going to keep it in the horizontal format. So if I knew the specific size, which would make sense, Um, like I could say, I want a four by five. Maybe that's a good ratio. Um, but if you're designing the cover of a book, you would probably have a specific size. But in this example, we'll just go with this ratio here, Um and I'm gonna just going to click and drag it upwards. Something about like that. And, um, we'll go ahead and leave content aware on and just see what happens. So this isn't too terrible over here. Um, how would we fix that? Well, I'd probably grab like, the healing brush, and if I option click weaken. Just hell over this ever so slightly. And that would be pretty good. And then we could get our fancy book title. And look at that, Ted. Uh, and I was just the crop 12. Right? So that is again with the content aware option turned on. So allows you to really taken image now, obviously, and reuse it in different ways. Obviously, your success is going to depend on how complicated that images. What what's going on in the background? Something with a really patterned wallpaper or something. Photoshopped may not do so good regenerating that, um, so, you know, choose strategically. But this would be a situation where I think taking in a horizontal image of this and turning it into a vertical for something like a book cover would be no big deal. That's simple. And, um, I think it would look great just to show you, um, then if you don't wanna mess with content aware, you can be strategic about filling this in. So as I told you, if we, um let's say Let's go back to the original ratio of this image here you can flip flop so we could keep the original ratio. But if I want to turn this into a horizontal image for, let's say, a little ad, I can click these little arrows right here, and that will flip flop it. So now it would be the same ratio but horizontal. And if I drag it like this, you see that photo shop is filling it in with White because that's the current background color. But what I really would need is to just fill it in with black. So I conceive myself from having to manually fill it. And if I cancel this and I just flip flop my colors and then they go back and drag this out, Photoshopped will fill that in with Black. So I don't even have to. And then, of course, the company logo. So it's really easy to take. Um oh, and on the monitor up here that is not looking so hot on the screen. It looks great. So in that case, we might need to do a little bit of blending. We could grab our Grady int tool, and I'm going to reset these. And maybe I add a black transparent Grady in here. Oops, there we go to kind of paint over this a little bit. I don't know if you can see that at home, but on the monitor here that was looking not so great. So you might have to do a little bit of touch up work. But it's a great way to taken image that you thought you might not be able to use and use it in a different way.

Ratings and Reviews

Lael
 

Something that seems so basic, but so important! Big help & tips on gallery wraps, ratio vs size cropping and when to specify resolution or when you need to delete those pixels! Super fun technique to 'crop to shape' great ideal for web & social media. I appreciate that Khara covered the change from 'old crop' panel (previous versions) to 'new crop' (more recent CC versions), every time the interface changes it hard to switch the brain over ;)

a Creativelive Student
 

I just bought this class based on the previous reviews. I am so glad that I did, as I learned some new tricks to do in Photoshop! Thank you Khara for sharing this great information!

Amy Vaughn
 

I didn't think I'd learn much in a class about cropping, but Khara went over a few things I didn't know. I'm a Photoshop dinosaur that hasn't been keeping up with all the changes to the tools that came along in the CC version, and turns out there are a few new goodies for cropping. She also had some good tips for gallery wraps.

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