Cropping

[Hagar]

This subject "cropped up" recently so here's an example of how a little careful cropping can improve your photos. I might not be the best photographer in the world but I've been messing around with images since getting my first computer, about 10 years ago although it seems much longer. I realised long ago that presentation is the secret & can make all the difference to how a painting or photo (or even a screenshot in FS) looks. To prove you don't need expensive graphics editing software I've used IrfanView (a small freeware program) for all processing of these images.

This is the original photo simply reduced to 800 pixels width for posting here. Not bad but it can be improved with a little work. It's been compressed slightly to comply with the forum limit of 100 Kb.


Now the same image cropped before reducing & saving at the same compression. The file size is 95 Kb.


I've seen it mentioned several times in recent topics that "compression kills". I don't think compression is the culprit & it all depends on the quality of the original image. This is the same cropped image compressed a little more to reduce the file size to below 50 Kb. Can you honestly see much difference?


I think the reduced quality is fine for posting here on the forum & allows me to get 10 photos in the same topic. Hope this little tip helps all the budding photographers out there. Now let's see what you can do.

[Tweek]

First rule: Always crop! You rarely find people posting pictures on forums/websites that haven't been cropped.

Then again, if you can get an aircraft perfectly in frame every time, congrats to you! (Though it does leave less room for post processing).

[Mictheslik]

I agree, cropping is very useful, it eliminates the need for a powerful zoom lens. It also enables you to cut out unwanted items;

This is the RNZAF 757, with an annoying speaker in the foreground

Here it is cropped

and here it is in reduced filesize;


Simple, and still a pretty good result, considering this was taken with a 35mm lens on a small compact digital

.Mic

[Hagar]

Simple, and still a pretty good result, considering this was taken with a 35mm lens on a small compact digital

Indeed. I see I'm preaching to the converted.