Riddle me this..WB

[joemontana57]

I just loaded pictures into LR that I had culled using BBPro. It worked very well, one odd thing though.
I crop many of the pictures, and adjust the WB on some of them. Why is it that I have to go to the Develop module to crop, but other Quick Develop stuff is in the Library module.

Is there any way to get cropping capability in Quick Develop in Library so I don't have to move back and forth?

 

[Robert T Higaki]

Yes- under Quick Develop
Saved Preset
Crop ratio



I personally never done this but you click on "original" which is next to
crop ratio. A window will open and will give you fixed choices or custom.

Bob- the slide shooter at heart

 

[joemontana57]

Thanks Bob. Now for my next question.
The only crops I see are crop ratios. Is there a way to have the "crop lasso", or whatever it's called on there?
Even if I choose Custom, it only lets me enter numbers for a fixed crop ratio.

Usually when I see a picture I want to crop, I click on "crop overlay" in the Develop module and then crop it to whatever size looks good. I've never used a fixed ratio crop.

Yes- under Quick Develop
Saved Preset
Crop ratio



I personally never done this but you click on "original" which is next to
crop ratio. A window will open and will give you fixed choices or custom.

Bob- the slide shooter at heart

 

[Robert T Higaki]

Joe,

I think you are stuck with those choices. I always use the crop function on the develop section for more customized work. If you have a bunch of different images, it would be tough to use a fixed generic crop and apply the same parameters to all the images.

Bob- the slide shooter at heart

 

[Brad Snyder]

Thanks Bob. Now for my next question.
The only crops I see are crop ratios. Is there a way to have the "crop lasso", or whatever it's called on there?

No, unfortunately, I believe it's a centered crop.

Usually when I see a picture I want to crop, I click on "crop overlay" in the Develop module and then crop it to whatever size looks good. I've never used a fixed ratio crop.

[COLOR=#''''ff]Isn't that unwieldy at print time? You shoot dog agility, if I remember correctly. How do you handle print fulfillment for your clients?[/COLOR]

.

 

[joemontana57]

I don't print for clients. They look on my website, tell me which pictures they would like on a CD (or DVD).
They can take the CD to walgreens, costco, some place where they can get their pictures printed. I just don't have the time or equipment to do custom prints.
I might have 15'' pictures at the end of a weekend. I run them through Breeze Browser pro and usually eliminate and delete 1/3 of them.
The rest I toss up onto my website, when a client wants a CD of pictures, only then do I take the time to edit the pictures.
This is only a side (very, very far side) business for me. A schoolteacher is my day job.

And yes, you are correct in that it's a centered crop. I can at least move the little box around, but it's awfully unwieldy.

 

[Brad Snyder]

If you're giving them basically random aspect ratio crops, don't they get fairly wonky prints? I mean it would be just by accident if the edited ratio fit the print size they selected.

Not finding fault, I struggled with this when I was learning, and still work pretty hard to make images that it's hard for clients to miscrop, when self-printing.

 

[joemontana57]

Ya know, I'd never thought of that. I'll have to give more thought to my cropping, it looks like.
Joe

If you're giving them basically random aspect ratio crops, don't they get fairly wonky prints? I mean it would be just by accident if the edited ratio fit the print size they selected.

 

[Brad Snyder]

For me it comes down to this. My camera, like most prosumer DSLR,s shoots an aspect ratio of

2:3 = 4:6 = .66 = 1/1.5

So picture this: I have a nice wide landscape format image, with my tall/narrow subject filling the vertical, but only a fraction of the horizontal. It's very tempting to re-crop to a portrait orientation, which is more suited to my tall and narrow subject. If my client wants a 4*6, this will be fine. However if they want a 5*7, or an 8*1', or etc, all of these are respectively shorter in proportion to their width (in portrait) that the 4*6, and my lovely crop will then have either heads or feet cut-off. Of course, if I get the camera rotation and framing right when shooting, the problem is solved. But as you know, this isn't always possible when shooting an action sport.

I can easily fix it, if I'm doing the printing, but most of my commercial stuff goes thru a self-service web-site, and unfortunately the cropping concepts, although well explained, elude most of my clients. Better to just make it fool-proof to start with, and live with the sub-optimum framing.

Lr uber-guru Lee Jay Fingersh, and myself have lobbied for a crop-overlay template high-lighting the relationships between these various h*w ratios, but so far no joy.

Food for thought.

 

[joemontana57]

Thanks for trying.
So, as I read this; In most cases would it be better to not crop at all, since they might be cropped at the photo lab anyway?

EDIT: I guess my thinking is, what difference does the crop ratio make if the client might print it a different size anyway? Let's say that I crop them all in a 4 X 6 ratio, but the client decides to print them 6X4, etc...

Lr uber-guru Lee Jay Fingersh, and myself have lobbied for a crop-overlay template high-lighting the relationships between these various h*w ratios, but so far no joy.

Food for thought.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

If you crop to 4x6 and they print 6x4, the lab will just turn them round.

 

[joemontana57]

I guess I'm not understanding something basic. It was my understanding that one could put the crop overlay tool on the photo, than making sure that the aspect ratio was locked, crop away.
Is that not correct then?

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yep, that's right Joe. Which bit didn't make it sound like that?

 

[joemontana57]

This bit, but clearly I misunderstood

If you're giving them basically random aspect ratio crops, don't they get fairly wonky prints?

Which bit didn't make it sound like that?

 

[Brad Snyder]

EDIT: I guess my thinking is, what difference does the crop ratio make if the client might print it a different size anyway? Let's say that I crop them all in a 4 X 6 ratio, but the client decides to print them 6X4, etc...

Well, that's not a particularly good example, because the lab will just autorotate it to fit, but I know what you mean.

The concept became clearer to me when I realized that of all the common/traditional formats, 4*6 was the most 'Rectangular', that is the least 'square', or having the largest difference between the wide and narrow sides.

4x6 = 1.5 to 1
5x7 = 1.4 to 1
8x1' = 1.25 to 1
11x14 = 1.27 to 1

* this ignores some new 'point and shoot' friendly sizes for sub-APC sensors.
Other sizes tend to be integer multiples of the above.

For pure client consumption, I crop everything to 4*6, being cognizant that if any enlargements are made, the image will be losing as much as 16% of its long dimension. In going from 4x6 to 8x1', that amounts to 2 inches total. Therefore, I ensure that nothing important is in that 16%/2 inches.

Usually that means cropping a little looser than optimal. Sometimes tho' it's the make or break decision point for whether to rotate the crop from horizontal to vertical, or vice versa.

I can work up an example set of images, if you're still interested. (Or haven't fallen asleep yet from the droning of my voice ).

 

[Brad Snyder]

This bit, but clearly I misunderstood

Okay, perhaps it's me misunderstanding. In one of your earlier posts, you said,

"Usually when I see a picture I want to crop, I click on "crop overlay" in the Develop module and then crop it to whatever size looks good. I've never used a fixed ratio crop."

To me that meant 'unlocked', with no aspect selected, which permits any 'free-form' rectangular aspect ratio to be applied. I think it's now apparent that you meant that you chose whichever preset aspect ratio looked best.

Anyway, my post immediately above still applies to a client-manipulated print environment.

 

[joemontana57]

Lightroom appears to have as the default "lock aspect ratio"
I don't select any ratio, per se, but crop with the crop overlay tool.

"Usually when I see a picture I want to crop, I click on "crop overlay" in the Develop module and then crop it to whatever size looks good. I've never used a fixed ratio crop."

To me that meant 'unlocked', with no aspect selected, which permits any 'free-form' rectangular aspect ratio to be applied. I think it's now apparent that you meant that you chose whichever preset aspect ratio looked best.

Anyway, my post immediately above still applies to a client-manipulated print environment.

 

[joemontana57]

I think I understand what you're saying, but I would like to see some examples if you would please.
Thanks!

I can work up an example set of images, if you're still interested. (Or haven't fallen asleep yet from the droning of my voice ).

 

[Brad Snyder]

Ok,

1) as shot (4x6), I'm seeing all that wasted space to the left and the right, with the subject basically incorrectly framed in the center. (This is more or less on purpose, in 4 strides, there is another jump, with an extreme close-up opportunity, which I don't want to lose, and is very hard to reframe/refocus, if I throw in a camera rotation as well. I'm sure you have analogous situations with dog agility. (and I've tried that too, it's very fast).

2) The 4x6 crop I'm tempted to make, to maximize the subject in the frame.

3) The result if my client tries to print a default 8x1' from the 4x6 crop they received.

4) The result if my client tries to print a 5x7.

I'm not saying there aren't ways around it; and some clients are sophisticated enough to deal with it, most aren't. This image, I'd definitely leave in the landscape, and avoid possible headaches thereby.

 

[joemontana57]

Thanks Brad! That clears it up for me, seeing a visual of what you're saying.

Ok,

1) as shot (4x6), I'm seeing all that wasted space to the left and the right, with the subject basically incorrectly framed in the center. (This is more or less on purpose, in 4 strides, there is another jump, with an extreme close-up opportunity, which I don't want to lose, and is very hard to reframe/refocus, if I throw in a camera rotation as well. I'm sure you have analogous situations with dog agility. (and I've tried that too, it's very fast).

2) The 4x6 crop I'm tempted to make, to maximize the subject in the frame.

3) The result if my client tries to print a default 8x1' from the 4x6 crop they received.

4) The result if my client tries to print a 5x7.

I'm not saying there aren't ways around it; and some clients are sophisticated enough to deal with it, most aren't. This image, I'd definitely leave in the landscape, and avoid possible headaches thereby.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Good work Joe !!
I took a while but once I grasped that everything is ratios and dimensions don't come into play until I export or print, it all became so easy.:lol:

 

[joemontana57]

I want to buy my sister a digital picture frame for Christmas. Is there a way in LR that I can crop for a certain resolution, instead of picture size in inches?

 

[Brad Snyder]

Sort of, crop to the proper aspect ratio, and then in the export dialog, choose the appropriate pixel dimensions in the Image Sizing panel.

 

[Denis Pagé]

I want to buy my sister a digital picture frame for Christmas. Is there a way in LR that I can crop for a certain resolution, instead of picture size in inches?

Most of those have an aspect ratio of 4wide x 3high. Then, look at the specifications of the Picture Frame. It should read 64'x48', 1'24x 768 or 8''x6'' for example, choose the numbers accordingly with the method Brad suggested. You can also sharpen for screen...