Adobe Photoshop CS4: Cropping Tips

It seems like most Photoshop users, even when they don't know how to do anything else with the software, know how crop photos. It's pretty easy: when you want to remove pixels from along the edge of a photo, you grab the Crop tool from the Toolbox, draw a crop box, tug on the sizing handles until its perfect, and then press [Enter] ([Return] on a Mac). If you can't get the box the right size (usually because you are on a caffeine overload and your mouse is too shaky) don't press [Enter], just press [Esc] and you can try again. But you knew that, right? Here are a couple of cropping tips that elude a number of otherwise competent Photoshop users.

1. As long as the border pixels are transparent or a solid color, just choose Image > Trim. It's quick, but also really great when the object you are cropping has a drop shadow with partially transparent pixels. You may not see them well, but the software will, and will crop up to the shadow, perfectly.
2. If you have a marching ants selection loaded, don't go back and draw a new box with the Crop tool, just choose Image > Crop.
3. And my favorite: I throw an image on the scanner, and besides picking up the white background of my scanner lid, of course the image isn't straight when I open it in Photoshop.

   Draw the crop box with the Crop tool, place your cursor just outside a sizing handle and it turns into a rotate cursor. Drag your mouse to rotate, adjust the sizing handles one more time, and presto: crop and straighten at the same time!

Want more Photoshop tips? I've got an Introduction to Photoshop CS4 class coming up on October 8-9, so put it on your calendar! The advanced class is October 12-13, if that's a better match for your skill set. Also, I put out the option earlier this summer to run a free, lunchtime seminar on creating a custom Twitter background in Photoshop. I didn't get much of a response, so I'd like to put it back out there. Any interest from our faithful Skills & Drills readers in attending a 1-hour seminar? Send me a tweet at BarbBinder if you are interested.