Basics: Crop and Resize Images in Photoshop

With modern digital cameras sometimes we need to resize our images for simplicity. Some devices cannot support large images and resize is the only way. Image cropping is different from image resizing. Sometimes you need only a specific part of your image and not the whole picture. With cropping, you can change the perspective of your images. So let’s see how to crop and resize images in Photoshop.

1) Crop and resize images in Photoshop

a) First, open the image you want to crop in Photoshop.

b) Pick the Crop Tool in your toolbar or press (C) on your keyboard.

c) Select the cropping method before you crop the image.
Unconstrained: This method let you crop the image without any rules.
Original Ratio: You can crop the image but with the original shape.
1×1: Square cropping method.
4×5, 8.5×11, 4×3, 5×7: Different methods with different width and height.
2×3: The most common cropping method. Standard output for most digital cameras.
16×9: Wide image cropping.

d) Crop the image.

2) Image Resizing

a) To  resize the image or change only the resolution go to Image > Image Size

2) To keep the original shape of your image and avoid distortion, make sure “Constrain Proportions” is selected. Change the pixels dimensions document size for printing.

Conclusion

When you crop or change the resolution of you images the image size in kilobytes (kb) or megabytes (mb) will also change. With resizing you can save space in your computer. If you plan to resize the images for web and make them load faster read: Optimize Images for the Web in Photoshop tutorial.