Crop Tool missing in Raw Filter

Is this by design, or is it a bug now in Photoshop?

By @byronw41971227

Well, it sure didn’t become a bug now, because it’s been working the same way in past versions, by design. Nothing has changed in this version.

When you apply Camera Raw as a raw file processor, the Crop tool is available because it crops entire files.

When you apply Camera Raw as a filter, you haven’t loaded a whole file, only a Photoshop layer. In Photoshop, it is not possible to crop just one layer out of several, because the Photoshop Crop tool only affects the entire Photoshop document. It’s the same in Camera Raw: Its Crop tool is one of several Camera Raw features and tools that is available only if you load a whole file. If you only loaded a Photoshop layer, several file-level Camera Raw tools are missing, including Crop.

It is possible that you’ve seen the Crop tool before in Camera Raw applied to a layer. If you did, it’s probably because that layer contained a whole file, in the form of a raw file placed as a Smart Object (embedded or linked). This is different than if you select a normal Photoshop layer and apply the Camera Raw filter to it, and that difference (Camera Raw used as a raw file import plug-in, not applied from the Photoshop Filter menu) is enough to make the Crop tool available in Camera Raw.

In short, if you applied Camera Raw from the Filter menu, some Camera Raw features will not be available, including the Crop tool.

If the Crop tool doesn’t work on Photoshop layers, how to you trim down a layer? Remember that there are two ways you can do that: A pixel layer mask, or a vector layer mask. You can use those techniques instead.

Not a bug. Raw camera data and rendered data are different. You open a raw file into the ACR plug-in, it is not yet rendered into Photoshop proper. Although the Camera Raw Filter is based on the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in, they are indeed different by design. For a rendered file open in Photoshop, you will need to use the Crop Tool or Canvas Size commands.