How can I crop to a specific aspect ratio in Photoshop CS5?
Asked 2/14/2012
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2 answers
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I use Photoshop CS5 Extended and often need to crop images to a fixed proportion for printing or web use. I know I can constrain the crop box manually, but I want to enter an exact aspect ratio such as 3:2, 11:14, or another custom ratio without estimating and counting pixels.
Can Photoshop CS5’s Crop tool be set to a specific proportion, and if so, how do I save or reuse that setting?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
2 Answers
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When you select the crop tool the toolbar offers some features to make cropping to proportions easy:
Pick the Crop tool and in the toolbar pick the crop icon with dropdown arrow, where you'll see presets. Pick one and use it.
No preset exists for the crop you want? Create it by entering the specifics in the fields to the right of the field: width, height, and resolution. Then go back to the preset window and click the right arrow flyout menu and choose "New Tool Preset." Name the preset and save. Next time, just use your preset.
Now, here's the real trick: you don't need to specify all three values (width, height, resolution) to create a preset. Just specify the width and height and create a preset with those to be able to simply crop to that aspect ratio, regardless of resolution.
Originally by user8473. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user8473
14y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes. In Photoshop, select the Crop tool and use the options bar at the top.
You can enter values for Width and Height to force a crop ratio or size. If you want only an aspect ratio, enter width and height and leave Resolution blank. For example, entering 3 and 2 gives a 3:2 crop, and 11in and 14in with resolution blank constrains the crop to that proportion without resampling to a specific output resolution.
If you also enter Resolution, Photoshop crops to that exact output size and resolution.
You can save commonly used settings as a Crop tool preset: after entering the values, open the Crop preset dropdown/flyout menu and choose the option to create a new tool preset. Then you can reuse that crop ratio later without retyping it.
So the short version is: use the Crop tool’s width/height fields for exact proportions, leave resolution blank for ratio-only cropping, and save presets for frequent use.
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