Posted by Fred Stearns on February 27, 2012 at 8:04 PM
I am going through a lot of old family pictures and have need to perform some minor cropping to may of them. However, I am having trouble making fine adjustments. One one picture I used for a sample, I can take a picture with a height of 1040 pixels and can crop it to a height of 1027 pixels. However, I do not need to take that big a slice off the bottom. I have noticed this problem before, but it has not been significant, though it has been bothersome. I am unable to find a way to make an adjustment to correct this. I have no problem with fine adjustment on the other tools and adjusting the mouse has no effect on this. Can anyone tell me what I am missing?
hanks,
Fred
Posted by Wayne Jones on February 27, 2012 at 8:17 PM
Fred,
It sounds like your problem may be related to (a) the crop lines attempting to "jump" near the borders of the image, and (b) screen resolution. If so, these two steps will help: (a) in the "View" pull-down menu, make sure that "snap" is not checked; and (b) enlarge the image on the screen to 100% or more and zoom in on one of the crop lines to make finer adjustments with your mouse (you can see them in the number of pixels -- if that's the unit you have set -- in the "info" window as you are cropping). I hope this helps.
Posted by John Mumaw on February 27, 2012 at 9:03 PM
The arrow keys on your keyboard will allow you to make fine adjustments.
Posted by Fred Stearns on February 27, 2012 at 9:42 PM
Wayne, you're a genius! I would never have thought of that. SNAP was indeed checked. I unchecked it and it works like I though it should. Thanks a million!
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 28, 2012 at 12:07 AM
And if you find the snap helpful sometimes, leave it turned on. You can disable it temporarily just by holding down the CTRL key when dragging.
Posted by Fred Stearns on February 28, 2012 at 12:37 AM
Thanks Paul. Yet another trick I need to remember. One of the good and bad things about Photoshop is that there are myriad ways to do anything!
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 28, 2012 at 1:45 AM
The keyboard shortcuts are mind-boggling, aren'tt they??
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 28, 2012 at 1:45 PM
Here's one more option to add: if you start drawing the crop box and you discover your top left corner isn't in the right starting point, you don't need to start over. Just press and hold the space bar, and when you move the mouse you'll be repositioning the crop box, not resizing it. Then let go of the space bar and resizing resumes. Try it! Add the CTRL with the space bar and you disengage the snap as well. Pretty neat.
BTW, this trick works with all of the selection tools too. Really helpful when selecting a round object.
Posted by Fred Stearns on February 28, 2012 at 10:22 PM
Discussion
8 replieshanks,
Fred
It sounds like your problem may be related to (a) the crop lines attempting to "jump" near the borders of the image, and (b) screen resolution. If so, these two steps will help: (a) in the "View" pull-down menu, make sure that "snap" is not checked; and (b) enlarge the image on the screen to 100% or more and zoom in on one of the crop lines to make finer adjustments with your mouse (you can see them in the number of pixels -- if that's the unit you have set -- in the "info" window as you are cropping). I hope this helps.
BTW, this trick works with all of the selection tools too. Really helpful when selecting a round object.