I am looking for a way to create a custom crop overlay. The few that Lightroom offer don't work when trying to do consistant head sizing in the program.
There are many types of compositional overlays that aren't included in Lightroom's Crop Tool. I would love to see at least twice as many as there currently are (more diagonals, golden ratios, root 4 rectangle, enclosures, etc...).
And, seriously, how hard would it be to give Camera Raw (Bridge) the same cropping choices as are in Lightroom and Photoshop (i.e., Fibonacci, Triangle, Diagonal, etc.)? This disparity in features is inexcusable and embarrassing. Surely the teams communicate?
Not sure if anyone suggested this but what I want is the ability to place individual crops for the different ratios as possibly a layer overlay on the image so that I can suggest different crops based on what a customer might order for a print. Then I would like to be able to produce a JPG using Image Processor and have a selection for which crop overlay it uses to produce the JPG.
I want the crop overlays to remain persistent in the PSD and/or XMP file (I use rarely just use Camera Raw, all my edited images end up as PSDs) so that if someone comes back later to suggest they want a different crop, I simply rerun Image Processor with the crop they requested and Image Processor looks up the correct crop overlay and crops the image.
By doing this, it would never be necessary to actually crop the original image, just suggest where the crop would be. This would guarantee consistent results from the same original image should you have to go back and regenerate a crop later after adding more edits to the PSD.
I don't use Lightroom but I had always assumed that Camera Raw would be used by Lightroom and Bridge/Photoshop. It would be nice if they were combined so that what you get in one, you get in the other because they are the same. I don't see the need for two different versions.
See the images below. In the Lightroom Classic crop tool, click on Custom, enter the Custom Crop Ratio you want then, back in the Crop Tool, the new Custom Crop Ratio will show up in the list for you to choose.
Sorry about these images, I had to use my iPhone since my snip tool would turn off the list where the custom selection is.
Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
I am looking for a crop overlay, not custom aspect ratio. I crop all my portaits at 5x7. A custom overlay would adjust with your image as you crop in, the same way the grid or rule of thirds overlays do.
What I am looking for has nothing to do with the aspect ratio. I want a better option to use as a cropping overlay. Thirds, Grid, Diagnal, Center, Triangle, Golden Ratio, Golden Spiral, and Aspect Ratio are the only current options. I am trying to just send in a suggestion to Adobe to add a better option for those who would like to create their own custom overlay.
Yes!! I need this too for headsizing! It would be nice to create a custom overlay in Photoshop, and then upload into Lightroom. Or for lightroom to be able to have custom lines created at specific distances, and/or ovals. How is this not an option?!
Correct. If you've shot hundreds of school portraits and want to make all their heads the same size using the crop tool, lightroom currently does not have an easy overlay that allows for this. An oval that could surround the face, or better yet, A.I. that detects their eyes and then applies a crop based on that so all faces come out same size.
The nearest function possible in Lightroom-Classic is a 'Layout Image' overlay, but it is not real useful as it disappears when you choose the Crop Tool.
It is useful when Camera Tethering as you can position the camera view to place and size a 'face' view.
Hello, I am a portrait photographer and I often take corporate photos, in this case, I have a large number of photos to crop while keeping a uniform appearance. I would like to have a custom template grid allowing me to crop easily a whole batch of photos
One technique you can use which can be very specific to your need, is a Loupe Overlay image.
Make a largely transparent image in PS, of the needed aspect ratio, that includes whatever guideline graphics you want. Then save this out in PNG and load that up within LrC as an overlay. This centres to fill your image. Unfortunately it only updates its scaling when you release the mouse after updating the crop, so this works as a trial-and-error process - as opposed to the standard crop overlay which updates live as you change the crop. And you will need to then toggle this Loupe Overlay off, otherwise the guidleines will show up in the output!
For normal crop overlay: besides the standard overlays, you can also choose a grid which is zoomable (for example, you might standardise on a grid scaled to 7 squares wide on the image). Perhaps you can guide your photo composition in that way. But I don't know of any way to use your own custom design of "live" crop overlay.
I've tried this technique before, but it's not practical, I would just like to benefit from an overlay with a head/eye area to be able to crop in an homogeneous way
C'mon Adobe. Please give us this option. A custom overlay for those of us doing volume photography is a must. Give us the option to adjust transparency of that overlay and it will be a huge timesaver for certain workflows.
I'm using an app called 'Red Lines Tools' (from the Mac Appstore). It's not working well in Crop-Mode, as the image size varies from image to image with no way to set it consistent. But it's working in full-screen view. So with a lot of going back and forth it's only just usable. But Lightroom should do better! Please, please provide options to set custom crop overlays! It will be a lot of help for us portrait photographers!
However, in 12.3 on macOS whilst you can display the overlay as soon as you enable Crop overlay tool the custom image disappears.
The workflow here is trying to crop a sequence of images consistently. So you setup an overlay so you can align things correctly - for example you want a product in the same position between shots. If you are making your own overlay you might also define a bounding box in which you want the object to appear.
Ideally the reference overlay you make is targetting the final cropped image. So having the Loupe Overlay sensibly visible when you are doing the crop is important. By sensibly, I mean that the overlay appears relative to the crop rectangle, not the original image. I want to make sure that certain elements in my final crop are aligned perfectly. There are times when you need more accuracy than a coarse grid and if you do have the grid enabled, counting boxes over several images slows you down.
Right now it is cumbersome having to switch between tools to check whether you have actually pin pointed the crop properly.
This is a very good idea, which must be super hard to implement or what are the excuses, why this is not a thing yet? Lightroom and Photoshop, both has different way crop overlay settings. Instagram's peak period is probably over, but if this is implemented in next 5 years, we may still use it. Just imagine this: you are cropping 5:4 and see also 1:1 overlay. Yes, this is possible in LrC, but not possible in Ps. Custom overlays? In this decade? Nah. Btw, idea from May 18, 2011. Shame.
This request is still very relivant. I don't wish to outsourse my headsizing, and want to have control over it. I am happy with Skylab for my background extractions, glass glare removal and retouching. However, I will continue to do my own headsizing. I would definitely cut down my workflow though if Lightroom had this feature, as I run everything through there as my first step.
Custom overlays? In this decade? Nah. Btw, idea from May 18, 2011. Shame.
Too bad Adobe isn't a well-funded, hugely-profitable tech company with a bottomless well of excellent developers with relevant experience creating photography-related software that promptly adds features that customers ask for.
Seems contemptuous of customers who have been asking for this for over 13 years. 🤷
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