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Nondestructive Cropping in PS CS4

September 23, 2008 01:34 AM Filed in: Adobe
Fig-04_11-Nondestructive-1
Cropping is very important, but it’s also permanent. When you crop an image, you permanently discard data. Nondestructive editing is a workaround that allows you to crop an image and keep the cropped pixels available for future use. Nondestructive editing provides you with flexibility throughout the design process. Let’s put the technique to the test:

  1. Open an image that needs cropping.
  2. To crop nondestructively, you must convert the Background into a standardlayer. You’ll explore layers in depth in Chapter 8, “Compositing with Layers.” For now, double-click the word Background in the Layers panel. Name the layer Car and click OK.
  3. Select the Crop tool by pressing C.
  4. Mark out an area to crop.
  5. In the Options bar, change the Cropped Area to Hide (Delete is selected by default).
  6. Click the Commit button or press Return/Enter.
  7. Select the Move tool by pressing V (as in moVe, the letter M used by the Marquee tool). Drag in the image and reposition it; the original pixels are still available, allowing you to modify the crop in the future.
Fig-04_12-ND-Crop-1

Because the cropped pixels were hidden (instead of deleted), details were preserved outside the cropped area. This allows for the image to be repositioned within the frame. Be sure to save the image as a PSD file or Layered TIFF to preserve future flexibility.

Tip:
With Photoshop CS4, you can choose Image > Reveal All to restore all hidden pixels if you’ve used the Hide method for cropping.


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