P: Allow Crop Settings in Presets

The original post and the thrust of my response relate to the addition of a Crop Value(s) to the Develop preset. 

There is a separate discussion percolating in places within this thread regarding the Most Recently Used Aspect Ratio list located in the Crop Tool panel Aspect Ratio pulldown.  Discussions regarding that separate issue set are unrelated to this original request.  

"Additions to" - and the "labeling of" - MRU Aspect Ratios probably belong in a separate thread. 

And this is the problem we face with forums. A very simple feature request soon becomes overwhelmed with people dreamlisting and Adobe goes off, scratching their heads and having meetings about how they can write an algorithm that can read the minds of every user and automatically correct wonky camera work whilst taking deliberate Dutch tilts into account and six years later the simple addition of a checkbox in a develop preset to do what can already be done with a menu item remains unimplemented. 

Where's the facepalm emoji?

Thanks John, but we had this discussion half a year ago, in this very thread and my respond to this would still be the same 😉

Daniel, the Any Crop plugin provides the options you describe (plus others, all based on use-cases provided by users).   Definitely not nearly as convenient as having it built-in to LR, but it provides the flexibility and can get the job done.

Love to see some movement here 🙂

Agreed with all above. What I would like to do is to set more than 5 custom crops and label them (just like what do you with metadata presets, import presets, etc.) so I don't need to remember more than 100 social media crops (and then there is different Wordpress themes etc.): https://www.godaddy.com/garage/webpro/design/facebook-profile-picture-size-and-more/
As mentioned above, I think it would be valuable to additionally set the following to any crop preset:
-) orientation sensitive / enforce orientation (landscape vs. portrait - many times it makes sense to keep the orientation but for the use case above it does not)
-) aspect ratio only / enforce pixel crop (again, most of the time aspect ratio is enough, but in the use case above it isn't... - if you apply enforced pixel crop on an image which is too small I would fall back to aspect ratio only, plus pixel sizes can be taken care of when exporting the photo)
-) as mentioned above I would expect the crop to be applied to the center of the photo (but also there, just like watermarking, you could make that customizable)

Thanks for jumping in Rikki. Good to see some involvement. Let me start by saying I second everything makespictures has just said.

Currently we can select a group of images in Library mode and then select a Crop Ratio from the "Quick Develop menu. BAM! Done.  Could we at least have THAT available in Develop and Import presets? No reinvention, no complex algorithms, just THAT menu item as a preset. Please. 

Many of your above questions seem to be based on the notion that the finished crop would be " baked in" and this is simply not the case. Of course we will tweak the individual cropping of shots as we grade.

I feel that one of the sticking points in many of these unaddressed feature requests is the misconception that users are looking to Adobe to auto finish our shots for us - in this case for the software to "compose" my shot for me. And, as Adobe attempt to capture more of the "enthusiast" market, perhaps that may make it onto your radar.

 But I think that, for most professionals, this is the exact opposite of what we want. I think many pros just want the software to bulk apply a number of time consuming "apply-to-all" settings to bring everything to a ballpark situation for us to start the grade. This can save us hours and hours and many thousands of dollars.

Many of us run businesses, like real estate photography, school photography etc. where our delivery requirements are fixed, our margins are low and where we just need to get things done and out the door as quickly as possible to earn a living. It's not all about art (I'm very sorry to have to say) and I wouldn't use this, or many other presets, for my personal work. But for what pays the bills, I just want the software to speed up the process.

Hi Rikki,

Thanks for asking us further about this, I first requested this feature years ago.

If you have  regular clients and they all have very specific aspect ratios to shoot for, the crop tool fails to keep this information organised. The list of crop aspect ratios is no use when a client is standing over your shoulder asking you to apply their web banner crop on an image (it only stores the last 6 or so custom ratios and if that can be converted into an existing ratio it does that automatically) - I want to go to presets and select "Client A - home page banner". Currently that information is not stored in a way that is easy to apply on the fly.


please see my answers below : 

Q - The Crop Preset is saved on a very large image 50 MP and then applied to a small image? 
A - I wouldn't have this situation, interested in aspect ratios only. Applying the crop to the image centrally would be a great start. 

Q - The Crop Preset is saved on a Landscape orientation image and then applied to a Portrait image? 
A - again, apply the crop centrally. 

Q -I see a lot of people clamoring for the feature but little in specifically how they want it to work. If I have a 3:2 landscape original and build a crop preset that crops 5:4 (with the crop also in a landscape orientation) - save it as a preset and then apply it to a 4:3 aspect ratio image which is in Portrait orientation - what should happen? 
A - I'd crop for the long edge (regardless of portrait or horizontal) and apply the crop centrally.

Q - Does the Crop Preset save only Aspect Ratio? 
A - yes, most people would adjust dimensions on export of the image. 

Q -  Does it shift orientation as the image shifts orientation? (Landscape/Portrait)
A - yes

Q - Start at the Top Left Corner (of the image? of the crop?) 
A - centre of image, not crop

Q - Center the crop to the image? 
A - yes

Q - Fill the crop to frame if the image's pixel dimensions fail to match? 
A - this could get messy, I'm sure we could deal with sync to aspect only and deal with pixel dimensions on export.

Q -I would like to see some discussion on expected behavior from those of you who need this functionality. Also describe how your workflow would be impacted - what types of images/sessions does this work well for? 
A - I touched on this earlier, if you are working professionally  you need to remove as many obstacles as possible on a shoot. Back calculating whether a crop of 2.1 x 2.97 is the same as an  8.5 x 11 crop whilst a client is watching is not fun and that's brain power I'd rather use to solve other problems on a shoot. While I am shooting clients ask me to go through and apply 4 different aspect ratios to an image so that they can see how it works for different outputs. Having a folder of a clients different aspects in the presets folder would be so useful.

Happy to answer any other questions. 

The feature could have multiple options to allow people to use it the way that it benefits their workflow.  At the very least, it should behave exactly like the "sync" function works for the crop setting.  In my workflow, I have a very specific aspect ratio, regardless of the orientation of the image, that I must use for a client.  It would be one less step for me to have the aspect ratio applied during the import process.  Other people might want specific pixel dimensions and/or specific locations in an image, so I think the more customizable the better.

"Please enlighten me on how detrimental things could be when compared to six years of inaction."  

Now that is part of the authoritative thread on this feature request, any information provided by Adobe goes to everyone who has this interest. I don't have to hunt for scattered threads to reply to them all...

As you throw your support behind a request such as this, I would ask you all a few questions. 

How would you expect this feature to work if:

The Crop Preset is saved on a very large image 50 MP and then applied to a small image? 
The Crop Preset is saved on a Landscape orientation image and then applied to a Portrait image? 

I see a lot of people clamoring for the feature but little in specifically how they want it to work. If I have a 3:2 landscape original and build a crop preset that crops 5:4 (with the crop also in a landscape orientation) - save it as a preset and then apply it to a 4:3 aspect ratio image which is in Portrait orientation - what should happen? 

Does the Crop Preset save only Aspect Ratio? 
Does it shift orientation as the image shifts orientation? (Landscape/Portrait)
Start at the Top Left Corner (of the image? of the crop?) 
Center the crop to the image? 
Fill the crop to frame if the image's pixel dimensions fail to match? 

I would like to see some discussion on expected behavior from those of you who need this functionality. Also describe how your workflow would be impacted - what types of images/sessions does this work well for? 

More information is always better.