Cropping and Composition

Cynthia Beth Rubin

1. Images scanned for the web should be BOTH resized and cropped

• All of the below images came from the same photograph, and all are 37k uncompressed
  
• There is no reason to be afraid to change a photograph!
  

2. Crop your scan for drama and impact, focusing on one interesting element.

• In the Toolbox, choose the Rectangular Cropping Tool in Upper Left of the tool box. .
  
  
• Make sure that these tools have been left on "normal".
  
  Once you have chosen the selection tool, the menu at the top of Photoshop 6.0 will change, and you will see various options.
  
  If everything is blank, then you do not have to worry!
  
  
• If you want all of your images to be the same size, consider setting the cropping tool to a fixed size.
  
  
• If you know the size that you want, try this trick:
  • open a new window, the exact size that you want
  • duplicate the layer of your source image onto the new untitled window (or copy and paste)
  • select the move tool, and move the image around "under the matte".
  • of course you can resize as well

3. Change the Size of your Scan/Image

• Under IMAGE go down to IMAGE SIZE.
  
  
• Change the Size by either PIXEL or PERCENT.
  
  note for the WEB 200 pixels for the horizontal dimension is a good start for the Web, (this will be about 25% across the page on a small screen). NEVER go above 450 pixels across. The smaller the better!
  
  
• IGNORE THE INCHES dimension. This is not useful until you know how you will be outputting, and not at all useful for the web.
  
  
• Set the Resolution (DPI) to 72 or 75, unless you know exactly how you are going to output the image. This is screen resolution.
  
  
• Leave on Constrain Proportions, and Resample Image (Bicubic)