Do your photos need some editing? Check out this page from The Designer's Graphic Stew and get some ideas on how to crop them in different ways!
Click on the image to enlarge and read about all sorts of ways to crop a photo.
Like this page and want more from the buffet of ideas? Pop on over to this post to see another inside peek or grab yourself a copy of this book for the whole smorgasbord!
Visual Ingredients, Techniques, and Layout Recipes for Graphic DesignersBy
Timothy Samara
Under the witty and metaphorical guise of a high-end cookbook, the author provides visual “ingredients,” such as grid structures, folios, border devices, type treatments, abstract graphic elements, categorized stylistically and functionally. These ingredients are shown in use through a “recipe” format to accomplish strategies such as movement, rhythm, organization, contrast, metaphor, etc. Ingredients are coded and cross-referenced among categories for mix and matching purposes as well as demonstrating varied alternate combinations to achieving different approaches to strategies.Timothy Samara is a graphic designer based in New York City, where he divides his time between teaching, writing, lecturing, and freelance consulting through STIM Visual Communication. His 18-year career in branding and information design has explored projects in print, packaging, environments, user interface design, and animation. He has been a senior art director at Ruder Finn, New York’s largest public relations firm, and senior art director at Pettistudio, a small multidisciplinary design firm. Before relocating to Manhattan, he was principal of Physiologic in Syracuse, located in upstate New York.
In 1990, he graduated a Trustee Scholar from the Graphic Design program at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Mr. Samara is a faculty member at New York’s School of Visual Arts, New York University, Purchase College/SUNY, and The New School, and has published six books on design and typography, all through Rockport Publishers: Making and Breaking the Grid; Typography Workbook; Publication Design Workbook; Type Style Finder; Design Elements; and, most recently, Design Evolution, released in January 2008. Mr. Samara and his partner live in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Question: Do you crop your photos or leave them as they were taken?Leave your answer and you are entered to win a free book of the week!
I crop depending on if I was able to 'crop' while taking the picture ... or what I am using it for. If it is a scrapbook layout, then I crop close to my subject, but if it is for my art journal, then I may leave it uncropped and write in the 'dead' space.
Posted by: Melanie K. | April 14, 2010 at 09:25 AM
For me, cropping depends on use - if I'm paper scrapping, I may not (if I have some 6.25 X 4.25 photos mattes lying around), but if I'm digi-scrapping (which I'm doing a lot more lately), I usually end up taking away some of the photo.
Posted by: Ron Perry | April 14, 2010 at 01:39 PM
I like to crop them, especially photos of buildings - I think you can get more interested out of a partial shot of a building, but cropping makes it easier to find just the right position, as opposed to taking the right picture.
Posted by: wendy m. | April 14, 2010 at 07:01 PM
I almost always crop my pictures. Sometimes it's just to pick out an element and more often, it's to get rid an ugly background.
Posted by: Julia | April 14, 2010 at 07:41 PM
Hi,
I always edit my photos, and often enough I end up cropping them, too. :)
Happy creating,
Birgit
Posted by: Birgit | April 15, 2010 at 08:46 AM
I leave them whole until I want to use them and then crop accordingly. Sometimes I may want to use several sections of the same photo. Cropping early would deny me that opportunity.
Posted by: Suella | April 16, 2010 at 12:35 PM