What is your best method for keeping the same pixel dimensions with cropping?

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bleirer

Bill, Cleveland OH.
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Let's say for whatever reason you have to crop a little but you still want the picture to have roughly the same pixel dimensions as when you started. For example start with a 4000x6000 image, crop it a little, and bring it back up to 4000x6000 pixels. There are several ways to do this in Photoshop and Lightroom, but which is the best way, in your view? Or are third party plugins noticeably better than photoshop?

In Photoshop neural filters there is the smart zoom tool that zooms in a new layer without changing overall image size and applies 'enhance detail' if you click that checkbox. In the image size menu using the 'preserve details 2.0 when resampling seems to be quite good too. In Lightroom or ACR the super-resolution tool doubles the width and height before cropping, but that can maybe be overkill.

What is your best way?
 
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In PS you can crop to fix axial ratio, in your case 4000x6000 pixels. In the crop tool look at the top left area of the screen and enter the value. Or I think in the pull down you can specific original ratio. In the later case you will need to resize the image - I think this is in the edit menu
 
RichF said:
In PS you can crop to fix axial ratio, in your case 4000x6000 pixels. In the crop tool look at the top left area of the screen and enter the value. Or I think in the pull down you can specific original ratio. In the later case you will need to resize the image - I think this is in the edit menu
Click to expand...

You are right of course, and that is more convenient to enter the W and H and pixel dimensions, but what I don't like there is you don't get control over which method is used for resampling. I think but I'm not sure they always use Bicubic. If one goes into image size it's an extra step, but you get a dropdown with all the methods. I'm usually partial to preserve details 2.0, but don't have much of a reason to give for my bias.
 
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For small size changes like you are talking about there is no real advantage to using 3rd party software. The specialized resizing tools are only beneficial for enlargements of 2x, 3x, etc.
 
NorthernFocus said:
For small size changes like you are talking about there is no real advantage to using 3rd party software. The specialized resizing tools are only beneficial for enlargements of 2x, 3x, etc.
Click to expand...
In that case, within Photoshop which method do you use?
 
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bleirer said:
Let's say for whatever reason you have to crop a little but you still want the picture to have roughly the same pixel dimensions as when you started. For example start with a 4000x6000 image, crop it a little, and bring it back up to 4000x6000 pixels. There are several ways to do this in Photoshop and Lightroom, but which is the best way, in your view? Or are third party plugins noticeably better than photoshop?

In Photoshop neural filters there is the smart zoom tool that zooms in a new layer without changing overall image size and applies 'enhance detail' if you click that checkbox. In the image size menu using the 'preserve details 2.0 when resampling seems to be quite good too. In Lightroom or ACR the super-resolution tool doubles the width and height before cropping, but that can maybe be overkill.

What is your best way?
Click to expand...

Transform panel in LrC.
 
lpphototx said:
Why do you want/ need to preserve the same pixel dimensions? A small crop won't impact most uses of the photo.
Click to expand...

I Would agree. Mostly if I want to print bigger than the crop pixel dimensions will support and I want my own control over the resampling. Doesn't have to be identical, just want enough pixels for my choice of print size and pixels per inch.
 
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bleirer said:
Interesting. So the scale slider? Do we know which method is used for that?
Click to expand...
Hi. In the car on the way to Yellowstone (obviously I’m not doing the driving) but it’s third from bottom I think, forget exact name, maybe scale. Click on R for crop and that will open the crop tool, then open the Transform panel. Scale up to as much as 150. Crop if you want. Use the bottom two sliders to move image up or down. It upsizes.
 
Viathelens said:
Hi. In the car on the way to Yellowstone (obviously I’m not doing the driving) but it’s third from bottom I think, forget exact name, maybe scale. Click on R for crop and that will open the crop tool, then open the Transform panel. Scale up to as much as 150. Crop if you want. Use the bottom two sliders to move image up or down. It upsizes.
Click to expand...

Enjoy Yellowstone! We're planning a fall trip this year.
 
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bleirer said:
You are right of course, and that is more convenient to enter the W and H and pixel dimensions, but what I don't like there is you don't get control over which method is used for resampling. I think but I'm not sure they always use Bicubic. If one goes into image size it's an extra step, but you get a dropdown with all the methods. I'm usually partial to preserve details 2.0, but don't have much of a reason to give for my bias.
Click to expand...
Make the dimensions 4x6, no pixel count. Then resize after cropping
 
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