Cropping images without changing the aspect ratio
Cropping pictures is one of the most commonly performed tasks on Photoshop and anyone can learn to do it quite easily. Cropping images in Photoshop is very simple, as it has a tool called Crop Tool. In the Photoshop toolbox, Crop tool is placed in the third row. Click on the Crop tool and select the area in the picture which you want to retain. Or go to the Options Bar and enter the height and width values of the desired size. Then drag the cropping border to your image which has to be cropped. When you will leave the mouse, the selected area will be highlighted and this is the portion which will be retained in the final image. The crop area can be moved around by dragging the selection handles. Alternatively, you can select the preset crop size from the Preset picker. This picker has most common picture sizes like 4x6 inches, 5x7 inches, and 8x10 inches and so on.
This was easy, but if you want to crop an image without changing its aspect ratio, here is how to do it. For this, you have to select the entire picture. You can do this by going to the top of the screen and clicking on Select menu, and then opting for All option. After doing this, your entire image will be selected and you will notice the selection outline around the entire image. Now, you will have to go to the Select menu again, but this time you will click on Transform selection option situated near the bottom of the Select menu. This command will allow you to make changes to the outline of the selected area without making any changes to the picture inside.
To make the selection size smaller, you can click on any of the selection handles (square boxes present on the selection outline), while holding the Shift key, and drag them with your mouse, either inwards or if it goes too inside, then outwards, depending on the area you want to select. You can keep moving and dragging the handles, till you are satisfied with the area you have selected, after which you can press the Enter button to confirm the action. This will keep the width to height aspect ratio same as the original image. When doing this you have to be careful not to click on the centre of the image else the target will move.
The final step will be to discard the surrounding area. For this, go to the Image menu at the top of the screen and from the drop down menu options, select Crop. After clicking on Crop, the Photoshop will crop away the entire area surrounding the selected portion. So all you will be left with is the desired portion of the image with the exact aspect ratio as the original picture. You can remove the selection outline from the photo by going to the Select menu again and choosing Deselect option.
Original Authors: Siva
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 17/04/2009
