Turning off crop suggestions in Elements

[jamesm79995884]

It appears that crop suggestions cannot be completely eliminated from the window in Photoshop Elements versions after 13. I absolutely hate this feature as every time my cursor passes over them, if the crop I have created has horizon straightening included, it goes away. I have to cancel and start over. It would be easier to live with if the click box for the crop did not relocate to a position close to the crop suggestions since accepting the final crop is when I accidentally pass over the crop suggestions. I am an event photographer (drag racing) and typically process around 500 images at a time, so speed is everything to me. Accidentally passing over the crop suggestions is a horrible time waster. I can't imagine anyone actually using the crop suggestions, so why can't they be removed from the screen? If there is a way, please let me know how.

[99jon]

Go to the menu:

Edit >> Preferences >> General

Uncheck the box – Enable Crop Pre-Selection

Then click OK

[jamesm79995884]

I have done this multiple times and it does not resolve the problem. The crop suggestions remain.

[99jon]

Do you have the settings in the tool bar set to unrestricted.

Try cropping a sample pic with that setting, save and close and see if it sticks.

[jamesm79995884]

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. What happens when the cursor passes over the Crop Suggestions is that any leveling done with the crop tool disappears. This happens when the crop is specified and when it is set to unrestricted. I can use the leveling tool so I don't have to level with the crop tool, but it adds an additional step. I really just want those silly crop suggestions to go away.

[ditzbitz]

I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm a digital scrapbook designer so I do a lot of extractions and cropping. Crop suggestions interrupts my workflow tremendously! I don't have the option anywhere in my settings to disable it so I contacted Adobe about it and was told that it was built into the program and could not be disabled. My poor old PSE9 has about had it so I bought Elements 2013 and I hate it. I only use it for making backgrounds because of the time consuming crop suggestions. I need to buy another Elements program but afraid I'll spend all that money just to get another program with the same annoyance.

[Glenn 8675309]

[MichelBParis]

@ditzbitz 

I am not a scrappbooker but I do a lot of photo books where each page is exactly like a scrapbook page.

I never meet your issue because I have disabled the preference as stated by 99jon and when I need the crop tool, I don't let my cursor stay on the cropping suggestions.

That said, I imagine that we both are using different workflows to achieve the same result.

To design a page with many pictures and enhancements, I can even work much faster without ever using the crop tool.

I don't mean using the well-known workaround of the rectangle tool followed by the command Image > Crop, I mean a workflow based on a pre-defined canvas, why not a 12" x 12" page at 300 ppi. That first step followed with loading all my assets in the editor in the film strip to place them in the default mode of smart layers. It's possible to work entirely with smart layers allowing reshaping each layer without any loss of quality. In most cases, you can even simplify layers for more flexibility.

So, my question is: why do you need to do so many crops in your scrapbooking workflow ? I am pretty sure you are not using smart layers by drag and drop from the photo bin fimstrip to the working canvas, like most PSE9 scrapbookers. That would be slowing down your workflow to a much greater extent.

[ditzbitz]

When I extract the background from an image there's too much dead space around the image so I have to crop it.

[MichelBParis]

When I extract the background from an image there's too much dead space around the image so I have to crop it.

By @ditzbitz

Since you are working with layers, it's better to imagine you are not 'cropping',  meaning 'removing external parts of the layer but you are making the external parts transparent.

For that, you'll have to select the part of the image to keep, then inverse the selection This is only possible if you simplify your layer, make it the only visible layer (alt click on its eye icon); then you can cut the external part. You'll often like to "fseather" the selection before cutting.

Any kind of selection tool will work.

If you don't want to simplify to keep the link with the original image, it's still possible to select via a clipping mask.

In practice, once the main layout is roughly set, you can safely resize/move slightly your elements without noticeable quality loss.

I suppose that scrapbookers keep layered tiff or psd versions of their artwork. For photobooks, with the number of pages it's often useful to reduce the storing size while keeping the layers, but by simplifying them. You never know, you might have to edit some text or image before a reprint!