Camera Labs

There, you have it again: Every time I try to get acquainted with this monster-program I stumble across something trivial - and give up
Simple task: make a crop from a photo of a given specific pixel dimension say 325x176px. I have Deke McLellands 1-on-1 book before me (chapter on cropping) but I can't find out
Anybody here who can help, please? (I'm "using" CS4)
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Btw. while I hope this can be done in Photoshop, I'm pretty sure it is not possible in Lightroom, and also not in CaptureNX. But in my ancient Paint Shop pro it's super easy

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

I still have Paint Shop Pro 7 on my system for those things I can't do as easily in PS

Dunno if CS is much different from Elements, but by setting unrestricted cropping, leaving the boxes for dimensions and resolution empty, and keeping an eye on the info panel you can set any pixel size you want.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Yeah, I have found the info panel.
Now I only have to find out, how to make that show pixel instead of cm...
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I made an error in that I chose some width and height for the crop (e.g. 3:2) to keep the ratio when cropping, which worked fine. But in this case the display in the info panel showed only the width and height I had put in

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Hi Thomas,

I've had the same problem and I haven't found the solution either. With the crop tool selected but no crop yet drawn it's possible to select or create a crop with a particular aspect ratio using the crop tool presets dropdown box (just below and to the left of the File menu selector). Unfortunately that doesn't help if you need a precise width and height in pixels though obviously there are options for resizing the cropped image afterwards.

As popo says, the rectangular marquee tool can also be used to select an area which can then be cropped by using the Image menu. The Info panel units are selected by clicking the little down arrow box to the right of the Info tab and selecting Panel Options.

By the way, something I've found useful from time to time is the ability to save a selection in one image, open a second image and load the originally saved selection by selecting the "Document" appropriate to the first image as the source for the crop. Hope that makes sense...

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Hmm, I didn't understand popo the way you did, but you're right:
You do the selection with the marquee tool first (which can be done in absolute pixels) and then choose image->crop from the Menu bar.
You could not achieve this with the crop-tool alone - methinks. At least not, when you like to conserve the individual pixels of the original and not resize them.
Thanks for your help!

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

I don't know if CS4 behaves different from the Elements series. To clarify what I had said, here's two screenshots showing how it works for me. They're rather big so I'm not embedding them.

Image 1
Crop tool selected. Aspect ratio set to unrestricted. Width, Height, Resolution left blank. Adjust crop box to give W and H in info panel as desired. I used 325x176 as mentioned earlier.

Image 2
Double click or green tick to perform crop. Note image is desired pixel size.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Well, I think there must be some way to make the info panel in PS also show pixel instead of cm/in. And then one can get along by using the crop tool alone.Will have a look for that setting...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Hi Thomas,

I included the way in my post above. It probably got lost in the other stuff!

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Yep, there is a menu in the info panel where you can switch to display pixel.
That way you can immediately crop to the desired size.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

The only thing that doesn't work with the cropping tool is (pre-)setting a ratio (say 3:2) and then crop to the required width (yes, the info panel shows the actual pixel sizes while drawing the cropping tool plus it has the desired aspect ration), as that will resize the cropped image to the size you have preset (3x2px/cm/in).
With the cropping tool you also need to steer your mouse to the exact size of the crop which might be fiddly esp. with large crops.
So for easiest cropping down to some given pixel size the way using the marquee tool first, entering the desired size of the selection/crop, positioning the selection at the right place in your image and then crop via menu is probably the most efficient.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

.
It is surprising that PhotoShop doesn't at least allow the option of numerically entering x,y coordinates and width and height for a crop.

By the way, in that Info panel there's a "+" sign with another "+" as a subscript just to the left of the "X:" and "Y:". That plus sign is clickable and guess what it does! I've only just discovered it or I would have mentioned it earlier.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Ey, you just passed 8000 posts. Congratulations, Bob!

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

.
I completely forgot it was coming up but I think it must have been your thread which is nice.

Thanks.

Bob.

P.S. I've just checked at it was my previous post in this thread. I'm not hugely into milestones but I'm happy that it was a post with something useful to add to the forum rather than a housekeeping task.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Don't use the crop tool for exact sizes. Use the rectangular selection tool and just enter the required pixel dimensions in the bar at the top. If it says cm, just replace it with px. For example 367 px.

Then nudge the selection with the arrow keys if required, before copying (CTRL C), then creating a new document (CTRL N) and pasting it it (CTRL V).

That's how I do all my crops on the results pages.

Hi Gordon,

I'm missing something. With CS4 those Width and Height boxes are greyed out with the default "Normal" style active. If I select "Fixed Size" from the Style dropdown listbox I can enter width and height in pixels but doing so doesn't update the selection... whoops, it just updated ...

I've just accidentally found out that after typing in a height and width the selection updates after I click somewhere in the image. Thanks for that: it'll be a real time-saver in the future. I wonder why Adobe doesn't seem to have documented this in the CS4 online Help pages?

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.