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About this lesson
Cropping tools let you cut away parts of a picture.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019/365.
Quick reference
Pictures - Crop
Cropping Tools let you cut away parts of a picture frame, but the original picture is preserved.
When to use
Pictures can fill boxes, circles or various other shapes. The cropping tools allow you to choose which part of the picture to fit into the new area of shape.
Instructions:
Begin by opening the corresponding Exercise File with this lesson, or go to File, New and find the template called Newsletter (soft blue design).
When a picture is selected, you will see handles around the frame and a new ribbon:
Activate the Crop feature
- Select a picture, click the Picture Tools ibbon, click Crop.
- Notice the handles on the picture change to Crop Lines.
- The mouse changes to match the crop lines when selecting them.
- Basically, the frame is cropped and the remaining portion of the picture is what you see. The full picture maintains itself and can be brought back if needed.
New Crop features on toolbar
Observe the results compared below.
Note: All 3 have the same frame area.
Cropped Pic: 
Apply FIT: 
Apply FILL: 
Crop to Shape
Tips
- Ctrl + Scroll is faster than pointing to the bottom right zoom controls. Zoom in or out quickly by holding down CTRL and scroll with your mouse wheel.
- To un-do anything, simply press Ctrl + Z, or click the un-do button on the Quick Access Toolbar.
- 00:01 In this lesson I want to show you how to crop pictures I want
- 00:05 to teach you the trick about croping pictures.
- 00:10 So I'm going to stay with this newsletter because it is full of pictures.
- 00:13 Notice my Graphics Manager from the last lesson.
- 00:15 I'll go ahead and close that.
- 00:17 And I'm going to go ahead and click on this picture on the top right hand side.
- 00:22 Now notice my Picture Tools Format did show up, and I'm going to go ahead and
- 00:25 click Format.
- 00:26 Over on the right-hand side, an entire section called Crop.
- 00:29 Now, it is worth the time to float your mouse and read each one of these.
- 00:33 Crop your picture to remove any unwanted areas.
- 00:36 Now, people always think cropping a picture is chopping a portion of
- 00:40 the picture off, not so.
- 00:41 It's actually changing the frame.
- 00:43 The entire full picture still remains.
- 00:46 Now here this one says fit.
- 00:48 We resize the picture to fit the cropped area.
- 00:51 Or this, fill.
- 00:53 We will the entire cropped area with the picture.
- 00:56 And this last one is clear the crop,
- 00:59 which actually restores the picture to its original size.
- 01:02 Now I suspect that that is the case with this picture.
- 01:05 I didn't do this template, remember?
- 01:06 We brought this in from File New.
- 01:08 I didn't create this, this is not my picture set.
- 01:11 But I'm going to go ahead and Clear Crop just to see, was it previously cropped?
- 01:15 Click, my goodness, I just found a hidden part of the picture.
- 01:19 Okay, well, let's go ahead and work with this, and we're going to crop this again.
- 01:24 So I'm going to control wheel up so I can see more of the picture on my screen.
- 01:28 And let's go ahead and try this.
- 01:30 When I click Crop, the handles in the corner just change shape.
- 01:34 Let me go back there and turn that off.
- 01:36 Normally, the little circles and squares of a picture are called handles.
- 01:41 And notice this top circle is a rotate.
- 01:42 I can click and drag that and rotate that.
- 01:45 Ctrl+Z will always undo the last thing you did.
- 01:48 Now Ctrl+Z is the same as this undo arrow, right over here,
- 01:51 it just takes longer to get to this undo arrow.
- 01:54 So it'd be a great idea to memorize a Ctrl+Z,
- 01:57 especially when you're working with pictures.
- 01:59 All right, let's go ahead and try this again.
- 02:01 When I click Crop, I get different handles and little black ones.
- 02:04 And I can click and drag these.
- 02:06 The corner ones are fine.
- 02:07 Now notice you can see the entire picture behind.
- 02:10 I can move that picture around.
- 02:12 The only thing I'm cropping is the shape.
- 02:14 So maybe I wanted more of the cords.
- 02:16 The minute I click off of it, that's a saved picture.
- 02:19 All right, click back on the picture, go back to format.
- 02:22 We'll go ahead and reset the picture.
- 02:24 We'll clear that crop.
- 02:25 And I'm going to move that picture.
- 02:28 Back to where it was originally, it doesn't matter at this point.
- 02:31 Now instead of hitting just the crop,
- 02:32 I will hit the drop down arrow, crop to shape.
- 02:35 What if I want to crop the shape to a banner?
- 02:38 Now I can change that banner, of course.
- 02:40 I can change the width of the banner, but notice a picture in the background,
- 02:43 I can click and drag, and move around.
- 02:45 And that's the the little trick I wanted to tell you about.
- 02:49 You're not chopping off the picture, you're chopping the shape, and
- 02:52 then you're readjusting the picture within the shape.
- 02:55 All right, your original picture is always preserved.
- 02:58 So let's go ahead and keep going with this.
- 03:00 I want to fit.
- 03:01 Let's say I want to fit the picture to that shape.
- 03:04 Now watch the size of that computer.
- 03:06 It's about to change, click.
- 03:08 There we go, actually fitting it as best as possible.
- 03:12 Now I want to fill the picture.
- 03:13 When I click fill it changes as well.
- 03:16 The only thing that's happening here, is it's doing automated functions
- 03:20 to save you from having to resize that picture on your own in the background.
- 03:24 All right, but the best kept secret here.
- 03:26 I want to look at this picture.
- 03:28 Go to Format, go to my Crop, and this Clear Crop is great.
- 03:34 Click that, and there you go, it's awesome.
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