Comments on: Quick Tip Tuesday

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:53:39 +0000

Maybe I’m missing something here…but the crop tool supports maintaining the aspect ratio in the same way as the transform tool.
I use it as follows:
-select crop tool
-select entire image with crop tool
-hold down shift, and drag crop tool corners to specify crop area
-hit enter to complete the crop

By: Tim Thompson

Tim Thompson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:24:05 +0000

Jeff,

When I click on the crop tool (this is in CS3), across the top, left to right is the crop tool with the presets dropdown, the width and height boxes, the resolution box and the measurement dropdown box, then I have a box that says “Front Image” and the last box is the “Clear” box.

Clicking on the “Front Image” box fills the width and height boxes with the size of the picture so the crop ratio stays the same.

This appears to work in the same way as tip 1 above.

By: jeff

jeff — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:27:59 +0000

Tim,
I’m not following you on the “front image button”. Which button is this?

By: Tim Thompson

Tim Thompson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:23:50 +0000

Your second tip is a good one to keep in mind. As for tip one and the crop tool, when I want to keep the same image ratio I just hit the front image button when I have the crop tool selected. This keeps the same ratio as the open picture and you can still adjust and move the crop section as desired.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:47:50 +0000

Nice tip, I did knot know this.

Question for you. What is the “right way an or size” to optimize for the web to have the rich color and have the photo not look pixellated?

I had the formula once, but lost it

Ken

By: Brian Reyman

Brian Reyman — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:01:34 +0000

Nice tip #2. I hadn’t considered that as a quick way to resize for the web – I typically go the math route that you mentioned.

This is another time that actions can really come in handy. Having a standard portrait/landscape sizing action can save a ton of time when needing to change the size and/or resolution. I do this frequently when outputting images for use in PowerPoint.