Adobe Lightroom Crop Tool

The Adobe Lightroom Crop Tool is far more versatile than many people realise. This Lightroom tutorial covers most of the tips, tricks and features of the Crop Tool covered in the Lightroom Training Course which is delivered both live onsite or as an Online Lightroom Course.

Adobe Lightroom Online Training Course

The Adobe Lightroom Course is now delivered online either as a full course or in small bitesize chunks with a live Lightroom Trainer – find out more about our Live Instructor Online Training Courses here.

Adobe Lightroom – Grid

As with most tools in Lightroom the Crop tool is in the Develop tab. You can either select it from the tab toolbar or press the shortcut key R (R toggles Crop on and off – pressing A toggles the Aspect Ratio on or off). Crop is a none destructive tool so you can cycle to any stage to adjust or undo the crop.

The Crop tool is only permanently committed once the image has been saved to a different file format.

Adobe Lightroom Grid Tools

Once you’ve clicked on the image to activate the grid the tool panel in the Develop Module opens up to the Crop settings.

Working with the Crop

Once the Grid is active simply drag on the Corner handles to define the crop size. If you wish to move the image independently behind the Grid simply hover the cursor over the image until it turns into a hand and drag into position. Clicking X will toggle between horizontal or vertical and holding Alt sizes the image from the centre whilst Shift toggles the lock on Aspect Ration.

Greta Powell Training – Quick Tip

If you right click on the Crop you will get a Crop as Shot option on the menu which automatically sizes the image to the grid for you.

Working with Straighten

If your image is not quite straight this tool lets you manually drag a line across the image which will then rotate and straighten to that exact line.

Crop Overlays
What are Crop Overlays?

A Crop Overlay refers to the guide lines across an image – they are methods of composition used in the arts such as drawing, painting and photography. To activate them press H to toggle between off and on and then press O to cycle through the overlays.

Crop Overlays can be customised by going to Tools> Crop Guide Overlay> Choose Overlays to Cycle

The Triangular overlay

Otherwise known as TM (Triangular Method) this tends to move forward from the popular Rule of Thirds to follow intersected points of interest. IE – the two marigolds following the diagonal in the bottom right of these image. Another example might be something like a tree or power tower where the diagonals cross.

Due to the Corona Virus we are currently offering this training as a live instructor online Lightroom Course.

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