CROP TOOL
The primary purpose of the crop tool is to crop
your images, but it has many more uses than this. It can be found on
the control panel, or you can press the "C" button on your
keyboard in order to activate it. In addition to cropping images,
the crop tool can be used to increase the size of the canvas. It can
also be used to rotate images, and it can resample them as well. For
those who are using Photoshop 6, it can be used to modify the
perspective of photos or images.
To use this tool, it would be best to start by
opening an image. It can be any image. Once you've opened it, press
"C" or click on the crop icon. To select an portion of the image you
want cropped, simply click and drag over it. Once you let go of the
mouse, the crop marquee will be visible on the image. It is not
important to be accurate when making a selection at first, because
it can be edited later. The default values of the crop tool make it
somewhat difficult to see the start and finish of a selection. The
start and finish of the selection is actually in the center of the
crop tool.
If you are looking to be precise, you will want
to change to a cursor which has a crosshair. It is important to note
that you can switch from the standard cursor to one with a crosshair
by turning on the Caps lock key at any time. This can work
with paint brushes as well. You may find the crosshair cursor hard
to see depending on the color of the background image. Once you have
decided which type of cursor you want to use, you now want to make a
selection of your image. You may see hollow squares on each corner
of the marquee.
These hollow squares are called handles,
because you can use them to change the size and shape of the
selection. When you move the cursor over the handles, you will
notice that it changes. This means that you can select and change
the size of the selection. Try making some changes to the crop
selection now to see how it works. As you can see, the height and
width can be altered simultaneously. If you hold down the Shift
key while changing the size of a selection, the height and width
will be constrained.
If you try to move the crop selection beyond
the edges of the document, you will find that it snaps to the edge
instantly. This makes it next to impossible to cut pixels from a
photo, but this behavior can be disabled when you press and hold the
Ctrl key when you are close to the edge of a document. The crop tool
is a very important feature of Photoshop, and has a number of
features. Many beginners believe that it is simply used for cropping
images, but it has a large number of features which are very useful.
