Creative Cropping

This shot was taken up in the hills of Dubrovnik. I was in a car and had to shoot quickly and managed to capture the top of the car door. The sky was gray which didn’t help. With a little creative cropping I was able to eliminate the door while keeping the image size the same. In addition, the sky was enhanced. The original and final images are shown below – I added some text also.

Original image Final image

Here are the steps that were used:

1. Open the image
2. Hold the Control key and tap the minus key to expand the work area. See figure below

3. Use the Eye Dropper tool to set the Foreground color to the sky color by clicking in the sky. We will need this as a background color later so click the double-headed arrow in the bottom of the toolbar or use the X key on the keyboard. See figure below. This switches the foreground and background.

4. Select the Crop tool and drag from the outside the upper left to the outside lower right of the image to place handles around the entire image. See figure below. If you place handles as in the figure below, we can actually modify the canvas area with the crop tool.

5. Use the Up Arrow key on your keyboard to move the crop border upwards until the door is out of the picture. See figure below.

6. Hit the Enter key to complete the crop. See figure below. The extra space we added to the top is filled with the current Foreground color which we selected in one of the above steps.

Let’s fix the sky next. The procedure is as follows; the Magic Wand, which makes a selection based on color, will be used to select the sky. Since the sky is more or less a uniform color this will work. We will get a little tricky when it comes to select the part of the sky that is behind the bushes.

1. Use the Magic Wand, as shown below, to click on the sky to make a selection.

2. Your selection should look like the figure below. Notice that the sky that extends down into the bushes is not selected.

3. Click Select->Similar on the menu and your picture should look like the Figure below. Notice that we over did it and have too much selected. We will use the lasso tool in the subtract mode to eliminate the unwanted areas.

4. Select the lasso tool and draw a selection around the unwanted areas while holding the Alt key on the keyboard. The Alt key tells the software to subtract from the selection. Your final selection should look like the figure below.

5. Next we will fill the selection with a gradient rather than with a solid color since this will be more realistic. Click the Foreground color box at the bottom of the toolbar and select a medium color for the top of the sky. Next click the background color box to select a lighter color.
6. Next select the Gradient tool, see the figure below.

7. Make sure you click the Linear Gradient button. See figure below.

8. Now just drag the mouse from top to bottom in the image and the selection will be filled with the gradient. Remember, you can always use Undo and refill the selection with a different gradient.
9. For the last two steps, click Select->Deselect to remove the marquee and save you work – that’s it.
10. You can add text on your own.