How do I crop a photo within a collage?

Report · Oct 01, 2017

I have created a collage showing phases of the eclipse. I need to crop the sides of each photo so they do not overlap and blcok the pictues on either side when I line them up.

Every time I try to crop a photo it crops the entire canvas or collage.

I then tried selecting the layer, clicking create mask then cropping and still it crops the entire collage.

I selected around the image with marque tool, clicked create mask, then crop tool, select and again the whole canvas is gone.

Why can't I just select the layer and crop it like I did when I resized the images using Free Transform?

I am using Photoshop Elements 14.

Report · Oct 01, 2017

To 'crop' a layer:

- select the most pertinent tool, generally the rectangular or elliptical marquee tool.

- Inverse selection(shortcut shift + Ctr +I)

- hit the 'Del' key.

You can also use other selection tools (lasso...). The idea is to delete what is outside the part of the layer you want to keep visible.

A more elaborate and flexible way is to use a clipping layer with a shape (not only rectangular or ellispse) under the layer to crop and to 'clip' the layer above with the menu Layer >> create clipping mask (Alt + Ctrl + G). That method is not destructive and you can move independently the clipping mask layer or the layer itself.

Report · Oct 01, 2017

Thanks but nothing worked.

On the first suggestion I used marque to select the object in the photo. I clicked Shift+Ctrl+I. The marque was aound my selection and on the entire outside of my canvas. I clicked delete several times and nothing happened.

I then tried Layer then create clipping mask. The layer I had selected went black. There wee no shapes to choose from.

In either method is thee supposed to be some kind of menu o box that comes up?

All the methods I have been using, nothing comes up or changes.

I find the outline of the layer using the move tool. It shows the edges of the photo when select that layer.. I just want to cut off a little on the left and right of the photo.

Nothing is working.

Report · Oct 01, 2017

I also found that when I use the marque tool I lose the outline of the layer so I don't know where the edges are anymore so I just draw a rectangle around the object I want to keep.

Whether I use mask or clipping mask I see something come up to the right in my layers box but nothing looks different on the photo and no menus come up. In clipping menu everything goes black which is not good because my background is black.

I may have to start this mess all over and crop all my photos separately then put them in the collage.

I just don't understand why I cannot crop layers. I can only crop the entire project.

Frustrating.

I am in Expert mode too.

Report · Oct 01, 2017

Let us focus on the first method. My guess is that part of the difficulty is that you are working on black backgrounds for each layer; that makes seeing the marquee selection difficult.

Try something simple to master the process:

- start with a black background

- duplicate it to a new layer

- on that layer draw any shape with the lasso tool and fill that selection with a bright color.

- duplicate that new layer.

You want to see both drawings side by side on the black canvas:

- select (highlight) the top layer - click on the eye left of the two underlying layers to hide them.

- now, with the upper layer selected, draw a rectangle just around the drawing with the marquee tool

- Select inverse the selection

- hit the del key.

- make the two underlying layers visible

- use the move tool to move the upper drawing so that the drawing on the middle layer appears.

- You can also 'crop' the middle layer in the same way.

Report · Oct 01, 2017

That worked.

I hid the background and some of the overlapping photos and it worked.

I was stuck in inverse selection but somehow I got out of it. I went back in history and started over.

I noticed after selecting the area and then inverting the selected area, when I hit delete I got this message.

"This smart layer must be simplified before it can be edited. Would you like to proceed?"

I click yes and then it lets me hit delete.

Is that right? what is it doing?

When I look in the history it says I a "Rasterize the Layer" each time I say ok. What is that doing?

I have done a few pictures this way in my collage and it is working.

Thank you!

Report · Oct 01, 2017

adobeuserinpoverty wrote
I noticed after selecting the area and then inverting the selected area, when I hit delete I got this message.
"This smart layer must be simplified before it can be edited. Would you like to proceed?"
I click yes and then it lets me hit delete.
Is that right? what is it doing?
When I look in the history it says I a "Rasterize the Layer" each time I say ok. What is that doing?
I have done a few pictures this way in my collage and it is working.
Thank you!

The explanation is that in the recent Elements versions, when you are dragging a file from your photo bin on the bottom into the edited space, that puts a layer over the background, but not a 'normal' layer made of pixels, only a sort of temporarry image created from a link to the original file you are dragging. It's called a 'smart' layer. You can see what would be the result of 'simplifying' (also called 'rasterizing') the image when you resize, move or rotate the smart layer. The smart layer always calculates what is shown from the original. You can reduce the size and increase it, there is no quality loss. That is no longer the case once you have simplified.

You'll also note that a number of edits you can do on a layer, including 'cropping', are not possible on smart layers, you have to simplify in order to throw away pixels...

Another thing to keep in mind: when you save your layered file (psd or tiff), a copy of each original for the smart layers is stored in your file, which can produce huge size files. Simplifying saves a lot of space; that's what I do once I know that the smart layers are correctly sized.