Cropping and Stuff Like Cropping
Hey, Rotating Is Like Cropping, Right?
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/1000 sec | F-STOP: F/4 | ISO: 200 | FOCAL LENGTH: 560mm | LOCATION: Tampa, FL, Buccaneers vs. Falcons
How important is cropping? Well, to give you an idea, a few years back, Adobe took the time to go back and do a bunch of updates to Photoshop’s Crop feature, noting that the #1 most-used tool or feature in all of Photoshop was cropping. So, I guess it’s pretty important. Of course, cropping is available in Lightroom Mobile, but before you go off on a cropfest, I think it’s important that you know, from a historical perspective, where the term “crop” came from, because it’s an interesting story (and one that is seldom shared). The term “CROP” was originally thought to be an acronym for “Careful Realignment Of Photo,” but in the late 1970s, photography researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign uncovered the original roots of the term, which as it turns out was actually named after famous Portuguese still-life photographer Carlos Remedios Ovidio Perez, who often cropped his photos using a wild “tesoura” technique. Word of his cropping became known throughout the Latin photography world, where he earned the nickname “Carlos El Cropadero!” which roughly translates to “Carlos the lone cowboy who crops like Senór John Wayne.” Now you know...the rest of the story.
Cropping an Image
If you need to crop an image, tap on an image to open it in Loupe view, and then tap on the Crop icon in the Action options at the bottom of the screen, which activates the Cropping tool. You’ll know it’s active because it puts a cropping border around your entire image (as seen here), and the tiles along the bottom contain one-click cropping aspect ratios (1x1, 5x4, and so on) and some other options for transforming and adjusting the image. To crop the image, just tap on a side or corner handle and drag the cropping border where you want it. The areas that will be cropped away are still visible, but they’re shown in dark gray (you can see here the players on the right would be cropped off if I were to go with this crop). To return to the original uncropped image, just double-tap anywhere within the cropping border or tap on the Undo icon (the curved arrow) at the top right. To commit the crop, tap on the checkmark icon at the bottom right or to get out of Crop altogether, tap on the little X icon at the bottom left.
Applying Preset Cropping Ratios
If you know you want a particular size ratio for your image, tap on the first Aspect tile and a pop-up menu appears with a list of preset sizes. Tap on the ratio you want applied (here, I tapped on 4x3), and the cropping border updates to the new ratio. Now that you’ve applied a crop, you can reposition your image within that cropping border by just tapping-and-dragging the image right where you want it.
Free-Form Cropping
If you tap on the second Aspect tile, it changes from Locked to Free. Choosing this means you’re not constrained to any preset ratio. So, once you choose it, you can then tap on any corner or side of the cropping border and move just that part right where you want, without affecting the other three sides (it’s like clicking on the Unlock icon for the Crop Overlay tool in Lightroom on your computer). Here, I tapped on Free and then just tapped-and-dragged each side of the cropping border right where I wanted it.
Straightening an Image
The photo shown here has a crooked horizon line, which pretty much ruins a great landscape shot. If you have a crooked image, to have Lightroom Mobile automatically straighten it, tap on the image to open it in Loupe view, and then tap on the Crop icon in the Action options at the bottom of the screen, which activates the cropping border. Now, just tap on the Auto Straighten tile and it will analyze the image for a few seconds and then automatically rotate it to where the image is straight.
Manually Rotate an Image
If you want to manually rotate your image within the cropping border, just tap-and-hold outside the cropping border and drag up/down, and the image will rotate within the cropping border (so you’re rotating the image, not the border). You can also tap-and-drag the Cropping Wheel that appears beneath the image. While rotating, you’ll see a grid appear over your image (seen here) to help you with the rotation. Here, I tapped on the second Aspect tile, selected Free (so I could move any side of the border), and then I tapped-and-dragged outside the border to rotate it until it was straight.
Rotating an Image 90°
If you want to rotate an image 90°, tap on the Rotate tile. Each time you tap it, it rotates the image 90°. Note: On an iPhone or Android phone, to save space, the Rotate tile is combined into a single Orientation tile, and when you tap on it, a pop-up menu appears where you can choose to rotate 90° (or Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical; more on this in a moment).
Flipping an Image
If you want to flip an image horizontally, tap on the Flip Hor tile, and it flips your image (like I did here). Of course, tapping on the Flip Vert tile flips your image upside down. Note: On an iPhone or Android Phone, to save space, the Flip tiles are combined into one single Orientation tile, and when you tap on it, a pop-up menu appears where you can choose Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical (or rotate 90°, which we just looked at).
