How do I unconstrain my cropping tool?

Yes, that in fact is what it turned out to be: a keyboard that's starting to stick, starting with the left-side shift key. Managed to learn all kinds of interesting other things though as a result of my question. Thanks to all.

Incidentally, since it's only doing perfect squares, are you sure your shift key isn't sticking? Maybe it's the keyboard.

> George: I forgot to mention that this happens only if you use New Document after copy and paste through the clipboard. The document then automatically follows the dimensions of the copied file size<<br />
I've never noticed this in 15 years or so I've been using Photoshop. I've never had the constrain dimensions option invoke itself (although I've set it and forgotten about it before). I use the copy-paste option to create new documents frequently. It constrains the original window to the dimensions in the clipboard, but I've never seen it automatically set a constrain crop preference!

Nancy,

Adobe has taken increasingly to viewing its customers as annoying adversaries to be ignored or berated rather than listened to. :/

Yeah, looks like a bug. Have you sent in a bug report?

"The settings are sticky until cleared, which I think is a good feature."

Sure, but not when you have to hit the "clear" button several times and then double-check to see what the tool is going to do when you change any values.

For me, the bizarre behavior comes up when I'm cropping images with one dimension filled in (i.e., 800px wide), then hit the switch button to make the height 800px (width is now blank). So far, so good. But when I change that height to say, 650 (still blank on width), it suddenly constrains the width to 800px (the previous value) WITHOUT showing anything in the width box! This can be confirmed by hitting the switch icon; suddenly it displays both values.

To fix it, one must manually delete the values and re-enter. Hey, that's productive. This wacky, incomprehensible bug has been around for a while, including CS3. HELLO ADOBE?

George: I forgot to mention that this happens only if you use New Document after copy and paste through the clipboard. The document then automatically follows the dimensions of the copied file size

You may have accidentally hit the "Front Image" button (next to the Clear button) while working on a square image. Or hit one of the crop tool presets. The settings are sticky until cleared, which I think is a good feature.

Re: charles badland: "Nope, the "Clear" button is right there at the top in the Option Bar of the Crop Tool."

Now I see it. Two different ways to free my cropping tool then; thanks.

Re: Omke Oudman: "If you create a new document the cropping tool get the sizes of that document, maybe you created a square document before??"

News to me. I've worked with oh several hundred images in Photoshop over the years, never encounted a situation before where the cropping tool was constrained. I can imagine situations where you might want the cropped area to have the exact same dimensions as the original, but it strikes me that this would be an exception to the usual state of affairs. Constraining the cropping tool to the proportions of your new image seems to be ... well, I don't understand why you might want this as the *default*.