3 Reasons To Crop Your Photos To Improve Your Images
Top 3 Reasons To Crop Your Photos And Improve Your Images
Although we would all love to get our images framed perfectly in camera, there are many times we can miss a distraction at the side of the frame, miss getting our subject in one of the “Rule of Thirds,” or any other number of issues. For these imperfectly framed images, you can turn to cropping your photos to improve those images and make them more pleasing.
#1 Reason To Crop Your Images - Get Closer To Your Subject
Probably the main reason you may want to crop your images could be the lack of a long enough zoom to fill the frame with your subject. The most likely subject of these images will be wildlife and bird images, which beg to be brought closer to the viewers gaze.
Although I love to incorporate the environment into my wildlife images, there are often times when the surrounding environment either doesn’t add anything to image, or distracts from the subject itself. And sometimes, you simply want the subject to take up the entire frame for more dramatic or artistic effect.
This large lion and his lioness mate had just finished a meal from a fresh catch of a Cape Buffalo. This image could use a crop.
This cropped image brings us closer to the subjects, but also leaves room in front of the lions to show a bit of the scene they are looking into.
This final edit crops us right into the subjects to give the viewer a nice closeup of the lions.
All of the images above were shot with a 24 Megapixel Fujifilm X-T2 at 200mm with the Fujinon 55-200mm lens. Even at 200mm, there wasn’t enough reach to get in tight on the lions. However, cropping in at different levels enables the photographer to bring the viewer in for different aspects and different impact.
Problems with cropping? Cropping in tight on images does have some downfalls, depending on what your intended use will be with the final images. If you only plan to use your images for social network sharing or putting on your website, then crop away. The images you use for these purposes do not need to be high resolution.
Plan on printing your images? The loss of resolution when cropping can drastically reduce the size of image that you are able to print. However, there is hope here! There are numerous different ways to “upscale” your cropped images to a higher resolution, and most of them work fairly well. There is one piece of software that excels here, and that is Gigapixel AI.
The final cropped image above was set at a very low resolution of 3.7mp, which would not make much of a print. However, I used Gigapixel AI to upscale this image to a whopping 70mp of high resolution goodness. Is it perfect? Not exactly, but it makes a huge difference if you want to make larger prints with your cropped images, and I would have no problem printing this up to a 30X20 print.
DISCLAIMER: I PAID for my version of Gigapixel AI, and make no compensation for these comments. These comments are my own based on my own use.
#2 Reason To Crop Your Images - Balance Your Composition
Like stated in the opening paragraph, sometimes our images aren’t perfectly framed, and the so called “rules” are out of line. If you need to align your subject into the “rule of thirds,” cropping is the quickest way to fix it.
In the images below with a hyena at Lake Nokuru in Kenya, I made the image at 55mm, which could have been closer had I been holding my other camera. The hyena came up to us pretty quickly, and I had no time to switch to my camera with a longer lens. The result is still good, but I wanted a closer crop, as well as to change the aspect to portrait.
The original RAW file before cropping was made at 55mm.
This final edit includes color correction, as well as a change in aspect with cropping. The hyena was also placed in the lower third quadrant to adhere to the “rule of thirds.”
As shown in the image above, this final edit includes color correction, as well as a change in aspect with cropping. The hyena was also placed in the lower third quadrant to adhere to the “rule of thirds.” I think most will agree that the crop improves the image by quite a bit, and works to add much more impact to the image. However, one could keep the original to include more of an environmental impact to the image. After all, it is quite a beautiful area to include with the subject.
#3 Reason To Crop Your Images - Create More Impact
I just love this next image, and I’ve edited it in many, many completely different ways. However, I almost always come back to liking a square crop the best. For me, it adds more impact to the image and draws the viewer into the subject.
Additionally, the square cropping improves the image by eliminating unnecessary elements off to each side of the subject. This little Vervet Monkey was a playful little fellow, and was trying to be sneaky by creeping around a tree. I think this final edit captures that playfulness quite well.
This is the RAW image before any edits or cropping.
This final edit is with a square crop to close in on the monkey and add much more impact for the viewer.
Using a square crop to improve this image removed excess distractions on the sides of the photo. I still left enough of the blurred out tree to guide the viewer into the focused area, which happens to be a Vervet Monkey I came across while walking through the grounds of Lake Naivasha in Kenya.
As with other cropped images, one can successfully “upscale” these images to a much higher resolution for printing utilizing Photoshop, Gigapixel AI, or other software.
Conclusion On Cropping Images
Although I’ve only shown 3 reasons to crop your photos to improve your images, there are many, many more to consider. Use cropping to add drama, remove distractions and create more intimacy with your images. There are no right or wrong answers here, and your creativity should be your guide. Also, don’t forget that you can upsize your cropped images for printing!
Do you have a favorite crop? Please leave your comments below.
Cheers, Matt