Les Jones

Photos > Behold the Power of Cropping Photos

Since I took the photo class I've become a convert to aggressive photo cropping. Not just cropping out empty space, ugly utility poles, and random passersby that wandered into the frame, but actually cropping meat out of the picture with an eye towards improving the composition. I crop my photos now and so should you.

Here's an uncropped photo of Katie:

It's an OK picture, but there's boring space around the edges that can and should be removed. There are no utility poles here, but the camera caught the blue and white tips of my tennis shoes at the bottom. There's also a little bit of a white boat intruding at the top edge that's distracting. Let's crop all of that out:

Much better, and by cropping the useless stuff the subject (Katie) gets bigger because I'm still exporting the picture to the same 500 pixel size. That's a big advantage of cropping digital photos - you see more of what's important.

In principle cropping a digital photo throws away pixels. In practice most people rarely use the full resolution of today's multi-megapixel cameras. You're usually reducing the photo for email or the Web or 5 x 7 prints.

That first crop is an improvement, but it still lacks punch. It also has a very wide aspect ratio. Here's another crop that cuts away peripheral subjects on the left to improve the composition - hasta la vista little fishies:

That second crop moved Katie's noggin to the upper left powerpoint, and that gives the picture more impact. The powerpoints are the intersections of the grid that define the rule of thirds. Moving subjects from the center to one of the powerpoints will often improve a photo.

The Four Powerpoints

You can also crop pictures to move subjects or horizon lines away from the vertical center or horizontal center. The picture usually looks better if you put the horizon line (the ocean, a field, the top of a mountain range, etc.) either one-third or two-thirds of the way up the picture rather than putting it dead center.

Here are some even more aggressive crops:

And a variation Swanky suggested in comments that I like even better:

Sky and grass are prime candidates for aggressive cropping. Would you rather see all that grass in the foreground or more of your aunt Cecilia who's visiting from Italy? You can look at grass anytime.

Be careful when cropping people. Cropping people at the neck or bust is fine. The stomach is usually OK. Cropping the legs may produce strange results.

So why didn't I crop pictures before now?

Lots of reasons.

• Ignorance. I didn't realize what a difference cropping could make, or how to do it in a way that would improve the composition.
• Sentimentality. It's my picture - what do you mean cut parts of it off! Now I realize that cutting off unimportant parts will help the important parts that remain.
• Mixed-up values. In the IT world you learn to never throw away information. I was worried about cropping out something that would be important later, like, I dunno, maybe Bigfoot was sticking his head out of the woods in the corner of the frame. Now I don't worry about it. With digital photos it's easy to copy a picture so you have one to crop and one original, so who cares. In Picasa I can always undo or redo the crop if I need to. That's how I retrieved the original version of the photo above.
• Change of work style. I used to do a lot of Web slideshows for our goofy trips. I might have 20 photos to post, so I generally just batch-processed them to correct the color and sharpen them up, and left it at that. Now that I'm focusing on just a couple of pictures at a time I can give them more attention.

As a counterpoint to my enthusiasm for cropping read Katherine Coble's Why I'm Against Scrapbooking. As she notes sometimes it's the things at the edges of old pictures - that house you used to live in, a piece of furniture, a toy - that help make the picture meaningful. (And note that when you crop an old print or Polaroid you really are throwing away pixels you'll never get back.)

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