"Crop-Lock" Selection in LightRoom

dbruno

Hi, All -

I have a question, and looking for comments, about how you crop final images (not portraits or headshots). Up until recently, I would develop a photo in LR, and just crop it willy-nilly to hide stuff. But obviously when you deliver a bunch of photos processed like this, they are all of different shapes and sizes. What I've been doing recently is leaving the crop-lock "locked", and keeping the aspect ratio equal for all photos in a set, and if there is something in the background I don't like, I live with it or do the best I can in LR to minimize it (I think Santa is bringing me PS Elements 2019, so this may help).

I shoot non-wedding events, so I would be looking for opinions from people who do the same. I'm just curious - is it better to have the aspect ratio the same on all, or does it matter especially in the age of digital sharing?

Thanks - Dave

Trev

Dave,

I personally have the opinion you need to have all the photos the same ratio aspect, that way you can get the normal photo sizes the same if printing.

I know you don't have Photoshop, which I use, but when I am editing in a RAW converter first up, then bring them into Photoshop for final tweaks, if there are images that need straightening, cropping, whatever, I don't do any of that in RAW editor, it's done in Photoshop.

For the rest of you who do use photoshop and want to know how to 'crop', I get my pixel dimensions to remain precisely the same as the ones I don't need to 'crop.

I edit, flatten then duplicate the layer and using the Transform Tool I drag out a corner of the image (holding the Shift key down) which then resizes that Layer, in the correct aspect, and position it on the image with just the image section I want inside on the background, and to straighten, move the cursor outside the box, it becomes a curved like tool with arrows each end, and just click and move up/down/left/right which rotates the layer.

Once done, flatten and you have a perfect pixel dimension 'cropped' to what you want.

Neil vN

As an aside, I prefer to do straightening and cropping of the RAW file, before exporting to JPG. The less work I do in Photoshop, the faster my workflow.