The following guest post on cropping images was submitted by Peter Carey from Hidden Creek Photo and The Carey Adventures.
Cropping, or removing certain portions of a photograph, has been around since the beginning of photography. In the digital photography age it is easier than ever to use this technique to bring about stellar results from your photographs. Before you discard that photograph you think of as boring or uninteresting, try a few of the suggestions in this article and see if you can pull something out that wasn’t there before and turn that throw-away photograph into a frame worthy print.
Cropping is fairly easy with most modern photo software. In this article I will be using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to demonstrate principles and techniques. While the specifics will be different from program to program, the basics are the same for most. Most programs will let you select a cropping tool and then either click and drag a freeform box around your subject or present you with clickable corners which can be moved about to gain the crop you are looking for. Clicking and dragging is the essence of modern cropping on the computer and is very easy to learn, while still being a powerful tool to help improve your photographs.
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