Quick guide to cropping

Cropping
An important but little explored areas of successful retouching is the crop, and this is where family photos are nearly always let down. Too often there’ll be a large area of empty space on either or both sides of the model, distracting the eye from what’s most important – the family member! Better to get this right in-camera, but if you haven’t, don’t be afraid to crop out anything that doesn’t add to the shot. A 4 to 3 is a standard crop ratio for portraiture, so once you select the Crop tool, type 4 and 3 into the Width and Height box for a landscape format image, and 3 and 4 for a portrait format image.