- [Instructor] The crop tool can be used
to strengthen a photo's composition.
It can also be used to crop an image
to a specific proportional dimension
for web banners, social media, or print.
And the best part is that Lightroom's crop tool
is completely non-destructive,
meaning that you can return to it at any time
to reset it or adjust the crop.
Let's take a look at how it works.
The crop tool is the first tool
in the tool strip here.
You can click on it to enter the crop tool
or press the R key on your keyboard.
Let's take a look at the aspect ratios,
which are found here under the word Original.
I'll click there, and we'll find some presets.
Let's say, for example,
we want to get an 8x10 of this print,
we'll choose that preset, and then we can reposition it
by clicking and dragging on the image here.
Notice that there are some grid lines here on the crop,
and this is called the crop overlay.
There's quite a few of 'em, actually.
If you press the O key on your keyboard,
you can toggle through them.
So I'll keep pressing my O key until we see
all the different crop overlays,
until I get back to the rule of thirds,
which is my favorite one.
Let's go back over here and take a look at the presets,
and notice that there's a padlock here.
This is telling us that the aspect ratio is locked.
If we click on any one of these edges
to change the size of the crop,
the proportions remain the same,
because that aspect ratio is locked.
If we click on the lock to unlock the aspect ratio,
then we can custom crop this in any way that we like.
When we're happy with the crop,
we can close out of the crop tool to apply it.
There's multiple different ways to do that.
You can click the Done,
you can click on the tool, you can click on close,
or the easiest is to just hit the Enter or Return key,
and we'll see that crop applied to the image.
I actually like this image better without a crop.
So I'll go back to the crop tool with R key
and then hit the Reset button to reset that
back to where we started.
The crop tool is also really good for straightening images,
and that's what this angle is for.
This image doesn't really need straightening, though,
so I'm going to switch to the next image
in the film strip down here,
and we could stay in the crop tool when we do that.
Notice that the horizon line of the water
is tipping to the right, and I want to straighten that up.
If I put my mouse just outside the frame of the image,
we get these arrows, and then by clicking and dragging,
that'll rotate the crop and we get the grid overlay,
which is really helpful for aligning that horizon line.
So this is just a visual way to do it.
It's pretty effective,
but there's actually a better way using this angle tool.
So I'm going to click the Reset button
to reset this back to where we started,
and then click on the angle tool,
which is really like a level.
That icon's supposed to be a level.
What I'm going to do is place the crosshairs,
not the level, but the crosshairs,
right on the edge of the horizon line,
and then click-drag, and it pulls out this line.
The goal is to place this line right along the horizon line,
because as soon as I release,
it'll take that line and it'll level it out.
So now this image looks great.
I can hit the Enter key to apply it.
And we'll see that it cropped it a little bit
and leveled out that horizon.
The angle tool works to straighten vertical lines, too,
so give it a try on your architectural images.
Remember, if you want to get a print made
at a specific size like 8x10 or 5x7,
the image will need to be cropped.
And it's better to do that yourself
instead of leaving it up to the printer to figure out.
Crop your image before you export a file to be printed.
And there's nothing to worry about,
because the crop is non-destructive.
The image can easily be returned to its original dimensions.