Quick Photo Cropping Trick
by Jen White

Photos are important.
In fact, they are the most important part of a classically designed scrapbook page.

So, that bears to reason that you want your photos to be at the top of their game. You want them to look their very best.

You want your photos to be:

• Color corrected
• Straight
• Properly cropped

In this tip I’ll show you a quick way to crop a photo that’s already positioned on a finished scrapbook page.

For this tutorial you will need:

• A scrapbook page with a photo.
• Photoshop Elements or Adobe Photoshop

Step One: Open a Scrapbook Page with a Photo

• Open a scrapbook page (File > Open) that contains a photo that could use some cropping.

This is the scrapbook page I’m using. The photo in the middle is cute, but I don’t really need all the blanket showing behind him. So, it should be cropped out.

If the photo is clipped to clipping mask or contains additional adjustment layers, you’ll want to merge them. To do that:

• In the Layers panel, click on the top layer of the photo adjustments to activate it.
• Press Ctrl E (Mac: Cmd E) to merge the layer down.
• Repeat with any additional layers.

Step Two: Create a Duplicate Photo Layer and Transform

• In the Layers panel, the photo layer needs to be the active layer.
• Press Ctrl J (Mac: Cmd J) to duplicate the photo layer.
• In the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Create Clipping Mask.
• Press Ctrl T (Mac: Cmd T) to get the transform options.
• Click and drag on the corner handles of the bounding box to enlarge the photo, which essentially crops it. Click and drag inside the bounding box to reposition the image. Use your keyboard Arrow keys to fine tune the placement. Click the checkmark to commit.

Caution: Excessive cropping using this method will result in a loss of detail.

Here is my finished double page spread. Cropping the photo made a huge difference!

 
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Author: Jen White | Contact Us
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