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shambles
shambles
Known Participant
September 25, 2020
Question

Crop image within a photoshop canvas

  • September 25, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 12982 views

I have a PS document I use as a 'template'. I place several images withing the canvas, but sometimes need to crop one or more of those images. Is there a way to do this within the document rather than cropping each image seperately, then placing each one back onto that canvas?

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    2 replies

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 25, 2020

    It sounds like you might try the Frame tool in Photoshop. With the Frame tool, you can draw rectangles that are placeholder frames that can contain and crop graphics that you drag and drop into the frames. You can then crop the images in Photoshop in two ways:

    • Select the frame thumbnail icon in the Layers panel to be able to select the frame around the graphic and change its size and position relative to the image.
    • Select the image thumbnail icon in the Layers panel to be able to select the image inside the frame and change its size and position relative to the frame.

     

     

    Because frames work as placeholder containers, frames are great for making Photoshop templates.

     

    If you’ve ever used Adobe InDesign, it’s the same idea as the graphics frames in InDesign.

      shambles
      shamblesAuthor
      Known Participant
      September 26, 2020

      Thanks for your reply, Conrad. I have extensive experience with InDesign, and have used that tool often in page layouts for print. Unless there's a feature I'm unaware of,  the frame tool just resizes the image with proportions restrained or not restrained, and positions it within the frame, fits the image to the frame, or the frame to the image. That's not what I was wanting to do in Photoshop. I often need to crop an image either just horizontally or just vertically. I've been opening the individual images, cropping them, then placing them into the Photoshop document. It works, but I didn't know if there was a shortcut to do this for each image within one document. 

       

      I've been using Photoshop for decades and I'm still learning. Is there really any such thing as a "Photoshop Expert"? 😉  I'm retired now, so I'm under no pressure to find solutions.

       

      Thanks again,

      John

      Conrad_C
      Community Expert
      Conrad_CCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      September 26, 2020

      Shambles wrote:

      I often need to crop an image either just horizontally or just vertically.

       

      Do you mean like what is shown below? A Photoshop frame does allow non-proportional resizing. I dragged the side handles, but the corner handles also weren’t constrained; if they were, the Shift key should toggle that on and off.

       

       

      As for whether anyone is a Photoshop “expert,” Photoshop is such a wide and deep application that in all but a very few cases, people who say they “know” Photoshop are usually experts in the parts they use a lot, but they do not know the many sides of Photoshop that they never touch. A lot of photographic Photoshop experts don’t know the scientific image analysis tools in Photoshop, a lot of web Photoshop experts know little about how to use Photoshop correctly for print, and a lot of experts at using Photoshop for pro-level printing on a million-dollar press know nothing about how to prep an image for professional video production (like how to use Pixel Aspect Ratio).

       

      That’s why we all talk to each other here, we help each other cover each of our own blind spots.

        JJMack
        Community Expert
        JJMackCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        September 25, 2020

        Crop or resize the image for a  template image area and and mask to image area shape?  Scripts can automate the populations of templates. Free Photoshop Photo Collage and mockup Toolkit 

         

        JJMack
        shambles
        shamblesAuthor
        Known Participant
        September 25, 2020

        Thanks, but I'm not using a Photoshop tempalte. I'm just using a document I creaeted as a template so I can place different photos and save as an individual document. What I'm asking is, can I crop and image or photo within a Photoshop document?

        JJMack
        Community Expert
        JJMackCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        September 25, 2020

        Crop crops all the layer in a a document.  You can delete pixels from a layer that would be like an image layer crop.  However.  doing  that while creating a template is not going to crop replacement replacement images.  You normally create templates to make thing easy to replace.   You would need to delete pixels in your replacement images like you did creating the template.

         

        Normally when you replace an image in a template you scale the replacement image the fill the Image area in the template and the layer is masked or clipped to constrain the visibility be only be visible in the templates image area it is like the Image is being cropped by the layer mask or clipping layer. 

         

        The scaling resize can be automated via Photoshop scripting and the masking would make it look like it was a centered aspect ratio crop. If you do not scale the replacement image for the templates  image area how would any animation know what crop you may want as your image corp. What you want you image's cropped composition to be.

         

        Templates are easy to create but should be designed to facilitate easy replacements.  Creating a template where you need to chose an acceptable composition for each image replacement is not the kind a Template I would create

        JJMack
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