Basic Cropping

Often, when editing a Photoshop document, you may want to trim the document to a smaller size, removing the unwanted edges. Cropping is the simplest way to go about doing this. This tutorial covers the fundamental method of cropping a document. The crop tool is found in the toolbar on the left side. When selected, the option bar presents a number of settings that can be changed to affect the width, height and resolution of the cropped selection. The area to be cropped can also be manually set by clicking an area, dragging, and thus creating a box around the area.

To cancel a crop: Press the esc key or "X" in the options bar.

To finalize a crop: Press the return key, double click inside the crop area or click the check mark in the options bar.

When cropping a document, the Info Palette will give you more information what's currently being cropped.The Info Palette can be found on the right side of the screen, in a panel of three tabs (Navigator, Histogram, and Info).

A few notes about cropping:

  • Before you select an area, the palette will display the location of the cursor in terms of X and Y coordinates (in inches).
  • Once you select an area that you want to crop, the palette will display the width and height of the crop.