This might be a dumb question but I don't believe in dumb questions so I'm going to ask.
In post editing, when you crop a photo does it impact the quality and printabity of an image? It seems cropped images appear fine online but I've had experiences when chopping out unwanted noise or visuals cause my printed images not to print well. Sometimes if I use an online print service like Snapfish or Costco those photos will load as "too small" and won't print.
What is the best practice for cropping photos while maintaining quality?
It depends on how much you're cropping out of your picture. If you're only cropping edges, you're not losing much, but let's say you took a picture of a city street and decided to crop into the car in the bottom right of the picture to make that the focus of the shot. When you cut everything else out and then try to pull that up to size, you will lose a lot of clarity. Think of it like a balloon. If you inflated it and then drew on it with a marker, it would be nice and clear. Let's say you then decided to blow it up a little bit more. The writing from the marker would stretch out a bit but would still be clear. Let's say you then added a lot more air to the balloon- the writing would stretch so thin that it would no longer look like it did on the smaller balloon. The original drawing from the marker didn't get any bigger- it was just stretched out. Does that make sense? I'm trying to figure out a way to explain it, lol!
It also depends how you save the picture after you crop it. Jpgs compress the picture information, so you want to make sure you are always saving it at the highest setting (12 in Photoshop). If you keep opening, changing, and re-saving a JPEG, the quality of the photo will suffer.
@julz It depends on how high the resolution was of the original image. If your original image was taken with a mediocre point and shoot at 1 mb, a severe crop will not look good enlarged and printed. If you are using a Nikon D800 and shooting RAW files at 36 mb with good glass, a severe crop will look great enlarged and printed. For cropping, shoot the original in the highest quality with the largest file possible.
@istacy1011 yup, makes sense. I like the analogy. :)
@archaeofrog good tip in jpg. I didn't realize it compresses and best to stay away from opening/cropping/ saving repeatedly. Great tip. I think I need to learn more about saving my photos at different resolutions.
I'm not using photoshop yet. I just got Lightroom and still need to install. Currently just using editing tools in my iPhoto. Not the greatest. And when I save I didn't see options to save at different settings.
Any tips on where and what to pay attention to accomplish that?
@soboy5 Great tip on shooting in high resolution. My best camera is a Canon Rebel T2i. I've not shot in raw yet. Definitely need to pay attention to shooting in higher resolution.
@julz You should have no problem with cropping with a T2i and you don't need to shoot RAW. Just set your JPEG image quality to the highest setting and then set your file size to the largest size.
In iphoto, it asks you the quality of the picture your are saving. Export as a .jpg at the highest level. Never replace your original, so you can go back and redo it.
This website makes it simple to work out he largest size that it is possible to print without losing quality. You just plug in the number of pixels it is wide, and the number it is high.
If you crop the image you are taking digital information away. Take too much away and you have to spread the pixels out so far the image loses clarity and definition. Alway set camera to large jpeg so you have more data to play about with. Don't use digital zoom in the camera as that is pre cropping for you.
This is off subject but regarding one of your comments...but I have a canon rebel t3 and I say, set your camera to shoot raw+jpg....I did that when I was starting to learn with my camera and just learning to use Lightroom as well...I will bet you like shooting raw better...I switched my camera to only shoot raw a couple months back because I wasn't touching any of the jpg files :)
I second what @mmartin said. I avoided shooting in RAW because I didn’t understand it. I regret it now. Just keep in mind that you will need to import RAW photos into editing software that will automatically convert them so you can see them.
If you are cropping, doing it in RAW before you do any edits makes it much more likely to stay clear. I second the RAW+jpg for beginners.
As far as size issues, the size goes down when you crop, because you're removing pixels. It doesn't stay the same size and just bs the information.
Remember when you think you're close enough, always take another step (or 20... if you're needing to crop severely) and then you might be close enough.
Write a Reply
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.
Tweets ahoy!
Join the Group
Pin With Me
@archaeofrog good tip in jpg. I didn't realize it compresses and best to stay away from opening/cropping/ saving repeatedly. Great tip. I think I need to learn more about saving my photos at different resolutions.
I'm not using photoshop yet. I just got Lightroom and still need to install. Currently just using editing tools in my iPhoto. Not the greatest. And when I save I didn't see options to save at different settings.
Any tips on where and what to pay attention to accomplish that?
@soboy5 Great tip on shooting in high resolution. My best camera is a Canon Rebel T2i. I've not shot in raw yet. Definitely need to pay attention to shooting in higher resolution.
http://www.rapidnet.com/~rernster/information_about/print_size_calculator.htm
As far as size issues, the size goes down when you crop, because you're removing pixels. It doesn't stay the same size and just bs the information.
Remember when you think you're close enough, always take another step (or 20... if you're needing to crop severely) and then you might be close enough.