project life :: cropping photos {with free printable}
A couple of weeks back, I wrote about picking photos for Project Life, and printing as 4×6″ vs 3×4″, and spoke a bit about options for the 3×4″ pockets:
“If you don’t have Photoshop to do the collage for the smaller photos, you could either focus on a few large photos and use the 3×4 cards as fillers, or, as you are looking at your photos, check out how much room there is in your image. Perhaps you have a landscape photo, but half of it isn’t anything important and you could crop it down to a 3×4 portrait oriented photo, or crop all four sides for a 3×4 landscape photo.”
I thought as a follow on from this, a bit of a visual guide explaining what I’m talking about might be useful. Flicking through my photo library, I found this image:
This is Miss Butterfly catching a ride on Daddy’s shoulders after the ANZAC Day parade last year. I love it just the way it is, and would be tempted to use it as a 4×6, but maybe there is something else that week I would rather feature, and for whatever reason, printing as a 3×4 isn’t an option. That’s where the cropping comes in. The below examples are based on cutting down a 4×6″ print to fit the 3×4″ pockets.
{OPTION ONE} – Retain landscape orientation.
As much as I love all the negative space, it’s secondary to the main subject of the photo – Butterfly. When I looked at how to cut it down, I decided to keep her still somewhat off centre to keep a bit of a feel of the original (plus it leaves space for them to “walk” into. I quite liked a crop like this –
original with crop lines:
finished crop version:
{OPTION TWO} – convert to portrait orientation.
Because the existing image is already 4″ high (and 6″ wide), to swap this landscape image to a portrait orientation, we only need to make two cuts. In the case of this photo, the width of Miss Butterfly’s bent arm plus her flag meant I really only had one option –
original with crop lines:
finished image after cropping:
If you are not certain how you want to crop the image, start with little cuts – it’s easier to trim more, but you can’t add it back! I’ve also made up a little printable crop guide for you to help visualise the end result. Simply print as a 4×6, and then cut out the white box in the centre, leaving you with a 3×4″ interior frame opening to move around on your print until you are happy with the result. Then simply add a light mark to the inside corners of the frame, and trim using your preferred method. (To download – click on the image below, which will bring up the full sized image, then simply right-click, and choose the “save image as” option. Personal use only, not for resale or redistribution. Please do not repost elsewhere.)
Thank you!
Thanks heaps for the instructions. Have shared it on twitter, facebook and pinterest 🙂
Aww, thank you! I’m glad you found it useful 🙂
Thanks for sharing, actually I use Picasa to manage my photos and this works fine with me.
Picasa! That was the other one (along with PicMonkey) I was thinking of for free photo editing, thanks for the heads up.
[…] Click here for the full tutorial and printable. […]