How to Crop Badly Composed Photos in Photoshop

Photography Tips  •  Photoshop Tutorials

Before Crop

After Crop

This tutorial is to help you learn how to crop badly composed photos and make them more pleasing to the eyes and to the rules of composition.  Many people tend to always put their subject right in the middle of the frame which works, but it may look better somewhere else.

For this photo, I was rushing to take it and wasn’t careful of how I composed it.  So instead of keeping the seals right smack in the middle, I think they would look better in the left third of the picture.  Especially because they are looking to the right.

1. To crop your photo simply chose the Crop Tool.

2. Enter in the dimensions that you want at the top of the screen, for this photo I used 4 by 3.

3. Then click and drag the crop tool over the area of the photo that you want to keep.

When you crop a photo you should think about the rule of thirds.  The rule of thirds is pretty much represented in the picture to the left.  The rule of thirds directs that the main subjects should be placed in the intersection points of the horizontal and vertical lines.

You shouldn’t always follow the rule of thirds exactly, but you should definitely consider it when cropping your photos.