Cropping an image to a Particular Size

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By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007

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These days, with the quality of digital cameras improving all the time many users get some very good quality pictures, but, when they print them out they do not seem to fit the paper at all, this very often happens because the pictures are not sized. To correct this the user can crop a picture to one of the more usual or accepted print sizes, funny isn't it all our measurements are mm or cm yet we still refer to sizes like 5 X 7, or 6 X 4 or 10 X 8, all these measurements of course are the old inches, which are still about, though if we only know metric then we can use the mm or cm means of measurement.

1. First open your picture in photoshop.
   
2. Next, decide on the size you want to print it at, and also the resolution, the best resolution for printing is usually 300 dpi (Dots pr inch).
   
3. Select the crop tool from the toolbar (Click the letter C on your keyboard).
   
4. Look at the contextual bar, just below the menu bar, and enter in the required sizes and resolution.
   
5. You are now ready to crop the image to that printable size which you chose, in doing this you may cut off a piece of the picture that you want, don't worry, help is not far away, in the form of the space-bar, if when you are cropping you hold down your left mouse button you will be able to reposition that crop are simply by holding down the space-bar and moving your mouse about the picture, this gives the user more control over the exact selection.
   
6. If you make a wrong selection just hit the escape button to return you to where you started. Happy Cropping.