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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.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Pictures - Crop94.3 KB Pictures - Crop
2.6 MB
Quick reference
Pictures - Crop
Cropping Tools let you cut away parts of a picture.
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 “Business Newsletter” called Trader News.
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 Ribbon, click “Crop”
- Notice the handles on the picture change to Crop Lines
- And 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
Computer 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 bar:
- 00:04 In this lesson, we're gonna learn how to crop pictures and how this little
- 00:08 feature actually works, still working on the Trader News sample news letter.
- 00:12 It's in the files with the video or you can click file new and pull it up.
- 00:16 I'm actually going to turn off my Graphics Manager over here,
- 00:20 that's also on the view ribbon, turn off Graphics Manager.
- 00:23 And I'm going to collapse my ribbons so I can get more screen room.
- 00:26 Now I'm going to put this in the middle and Ctrl+wheel up with your mouse or
- 00:31 use the zoom control right down here to zoom in so we can see the picture nice and
- 00:35 large on our screen.
- 00:37 All right, when I activate the picture,
- 00:38 notice we have handles around the edges of it, the little squares and circles.
- 00:42 And we have a rotate option here where I can actually tip the picture sideways.
- 00:46 Control+Z will undo that or
- 00:48 this button right up here that says Undo will do the same thing.
- 00:52 Now when I've activated the picture,
- 00:53 I have a brand new Picture Tools ribbon up on top.
- 00:56 I'll go ahead and click on Format and here's our Crop section right over here.
- 01:00 When I click on Crop, observe what happens to the handles.
- 01:03 They turned into black lines.
- 01:05 When I move my mouse down here and float on one of the black lines, the mouse turns
- 01:08 into a completely different shape that matches the line I'm floated on.
- 01:12 So I'm going to aim for the top right hand corner, the crop corner.
- 01:15 If I go outside, I don't have the right mouse.
- 01:17 So I'm gonna click right there and I'm gonna crop this down a little bit,
- 01:21 about halfway in size vertically.
- 01:23 And when I let go, notice the original picture still maintains itself.
- 01:27 It's still in the background.
- 01:28 We're basically cropping the picture frame and allowing only this section to show.
- 01:32 To see how it's gonna look, I'm gonna click off to the left onto the margin area
- 01:36 and you can see that's all that's left.
- 01:38 Now I'm gonna go ahead and activate this picture again.
- 01:41 And I'm gonna come back up here to Format, because there's a couple
- 01:44 of the buttons that were grayed out a moment ago, but now they have options.
- 01:47 So this one will actually fit the entire picture into that shape.
- 01:52 So I'm gonna go ahead and click on that, and notice what happened.
- 01:54 It doesn't look near as good.
- 01:56 But notice the shape outline is there, but it's trying to fit the entire picture
- 02:00 in there and all the parameters of that picture.
- 02:03 So I'm gonna draw your attention to the space between the top of the chair and
- 02:07 the wall, look at the distance there.
- 02:09 Now I'm gonna show you the other option.
- 02:11 Right up here on the top right, that was our Fit.
- 02:14 Now this one is called the Fill.
- 02:15 If you watch that chair and the wall I just pointed out, I'm gonna go ahead and
- 02:19 activate Fill and here's the difference.
- 02:21 I click that one, notice it now filled the picture,
- 02:24 doesn't care about the parameters.
- 02:27 And the top of the chair is at the top of the picture.
- 02:29 So that's the difference between the fit and the fill.
- 02:33 So at any time, if you want to uncrop this, maybe I would just Ctrl+Z right now.
- 02:39 But maybe it's tomorrow, and I wanna uncrop this.
- 02:43 We have this Clear Crop right here.
- 02:45 When I clear the crop, it will bring it all back, but
- 02:47 it won't set it back to its original position.
- 02:50 I have to literally click and drag to move it.
- 02:53 That's why I prefer to use the Control+z, it would do all that moving for me.
- 02:57 There's one more little piece of magic in here and that is crop to a shape.
- 03:00 So again I'm on the picture, I go to my Picture Tools.
- 03:04 I click on Format, I go to my Crop but instead of hitting this top button,
- 03:08 I'm gonna hit the drop down arrow, and that gives me an option to crop, to shape.
- 03:12 All my shapes come up and I have this little banner right down here.
- 03:15 I'm going to go ahead and click on the banner, and
- 03:19 you can see in the background what's going to happen, what areas will be cropped out.
- 03:23 And maybe I want to make this a little smaller so I can actually
- 03:26 make that banner shape a little smaller, and I'm going to click off of it.
- 03:31 Again, what if your boss says, well I like that, but
- 03:34 I want more of the background wall there?
- 03:36 Well, no problem.
- 03:36 I'm gonna click on this again.
- 03:38 I have to go back to the cropping in order to move that picture around,
- 03:42 cuz I've gotta see the original picture.
- 03:44 And watch, I'm just gonna move the picture and
- 03:48 adjust how much of that picture's gonna show up in the shape.
- 03:51 And that's the secret to cropping is your original picture keeps itself whole.
- 03:57 It's just a shape we're cropping, and then it's up to you to
- 03:59 actually move the picture around to see the part that you wanna end up seeing.
- 04:03 It's pretty great.
- 04:04 You might not be a master of it right away, but
- 04:06 at least you'll understand all the features of it.
- 04:08 All right, have fun with that.
- 04:10 Thanks.
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