Crop Tool
Two spaces below the Marquee tool, you'll find the Crop tool. Although the Crop tool doesn't produce a selection, it does allow you to isolate a certain area of your image. Using this tool, you can crop an image, as well as resize and rotate it at the same time (Figures 2.17 and 2.18).
Figure 2.17. The original image. (©2005 Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com)
Figure 2.18. The original image cropped and rotated.
When you click and drag over an image with the Crop tool selected, a dashed rectangle appears. When the Shield Cropped Area check box is turned on, the area outside the cropping rectangle will be covered with the color indicated in the options bar and might appear to be partially transparent, depending on the Opacity setting (Figure 2.19). You can drag any one of the hollow squares on the edge of the rectangle to change its size. Also, you can hold down the Shift key while dragging a corner to maintain the width-to-height proportions of the rectangle. Anything beyond the edge of the rectangle is discarded when the image is cropped (if you haven't turned on the Hide option).
Figure 2.19. The cropping rectangle. (©2005 Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com)
 | If the cropping rectangle extends beyond the edge of your screen, the extended areas will be filled with the current background color (if you have a background image) or will be transparent (filled with a checkerboard pattern) if you don't have a background image. To match the size of another open document, click that document to make it active for editing and then click the Front Image button in the options bar. This will enter the Width, Height, and Resolution settings of that document into the options bar. Now you can use the Crop tool on any open document, and the result will match the size of the original document. If you don't want to resize the image when you crop it, click the Clear button in the options bar to clear out the Width, Height, and Resolution fields before you create a cropping rectangle. |
To rotate the image, you can move your cursor just beyond one of the corner points and drag (look for an icon that looks like a curve with arrows on each end). You can also drag the crosshair in the center of the rectangle to change the point from which the rectangle will be rotated. Press Esc to cancel, or press Return or Enter (or double-click within the cropping rectangle) to complete the cropping. If you're working on a layer (instead of the background) and the Delete option is chosen in the options bar, then all information that appears outside the cropping rectangle will be discarded. If the Hide option is chosen, then the area outside the cropping rectangle will not be discarded, but will instead remain as image data that extends beyond the bounds of the visible image. This option is very useful when you are creating animations in ImageReady and you'd like part of the image to start outside the image area.
Occasionally, you'll need to crop and resize an image at the same time. Maybe you need three images to be the exact same size, or perhaps you need your image to be a specific width. You can do this by specifying the exact Width, Height, and Resolution settings you desire before you create a cropping rectangle. Once you've created a cropping rectangle on your image, you'll notice that different options appear in the options bar (Figure 2.20). By typing in both a Width and a Height setting, you constrain the shape of the rectangle that you draw. I occasionally leave one of these values empty so that I can still create any rectangular shape.
Figure 2.20. The options bar after a cropping rectangle is added to the image.
When the Perspective choice in the options bar is turned on (it becomes available once you've created a cropping rectangle), you will be able to move each corner of the cropping rectangle independently. This allows you to align the four corners with lines that would be level in real life but may appear in perspective in a photograph (Figure 2.21). Once you have all four corners in place, you can press Return or Enter to crop the image and correct the perspective of the image in one step (Figure 2.22).
Figure 2.21. Getting the corners to line up with level lines. (©2005 PhotoSpin, www.photospin.com)
Figure 2.22. Result of applying a perspective crop.
You don't have to crop the image while you are correcting its perspective. Once you have the corners in the correct location to establish the perspective of the image, move the side handles—or Option-drag (Mac)/Alt-drag (Windows) the corner handles—until the area you'd like to keep is within the cropping rectangle, and then press Enter (Figures 2.23 and 2.24).
Figure 2.24. Result of correcting perspective.
