CROP like a PRO. Wildlife photo editing tips with Janine

hey guys this is janine from pangolin photo safaris and today i'll be talking to you about how to best crop an image first i'll be talking about formats and aspect ratios as well as the recommended pixel count for print secondly i'll be going through some basic cropping rules and how to break them and last i'll be explaining some tips and tricks on how cropping can help you salvage an image that might have gone wrong i hope you will enjoy this so let's jump right in unlike the technical side of photography cropping is a tool that affects the creative aspect of photography and is therefore a very personal choice and subjective however anyone is entitled to their own taste and ideas please share them with me just down below number one aspect ratios in pixel accounts while the cropping tool in any software seems very straightforward and easy to use cropping is often not quite as intuitive as one thinks during pangolins regular lightroom workshops and editing sessions with guests i often find that cropping takes place rather uncoordinated meaning that photographers often choose a seemingly random aspect ratio that best fits the subject in the frame the result is that each and every image is differently sized and images don't get displayed in their full potential whenever they are presented as the aspect ratio usually doesn't fit the medium anymore my personal ocd doesn't allow me to have a portfolio of images with different formats it frankly drives me mad however there's good reasons to choose a variety of different aspect ratios for your images my suggestion is to keep them in their original format until you know what you want to do with the image do you want to print a three-piece wall art choose a panorama for your welcome screen on your home page make a social media post or create a slideshow on your tv each undertaking requires you to choose a different aspect ratio and not every aspect ratio suits every photograph or subject matter so not just you need to know which aspect ratio is required but also find the right image to suit your undertaking you might now think that i make this sound way more complicated than what it should be but let's have a look at it together and check out the three most frequently used aspect ratios that differentiate from our original camera format which is a two by three sixteen by nine is what both a tv screen and a computer monitor use so if your intention is to create a slideshow for your tv display an image on an overhead projector at a camera club build a screen saver on your computer or insert images into a presentation 16x9 is the best aspect ratio to choose it is fairly similar to your original format and should fit most horizontal or otherwise called landscape images very well it does look quite awkward vertically as it is simply too long and also doesn't add any value for the mentioned mediums in that regard next we have a 4x5 which is an aspect ratio that has increasingly gained in popularity through social media posts all vertical social media posts on instagram and facebook are displayed as a 4x5 aspect ratio facebook does allow you to expand the image to the original 2x3 but unless you click on the image it is displayed as a random crop that you have no control over instagram does not provide you with a 2x3 option at all while horizontal can be displayed in the original 2x3 format vertical images tend to have better traction on social media as they are visually larger on a cell phone screen which most people use to browse through instagram for instance this was quite an adjustment for me and one i don't particularly enjoy a must admit the reason is twofold firstly i often prefer horizontal or landscape images over vertical images it might have to do with the fact that we are very used to looking at horizontal layouts in monitors or maybe because our own peripheral vision is wider than what it is high and therefore feels natural secondly i often find that the 4x5 format is simply too short it feels like the subject gets squashed into space and is lacking negative space that draws the viewer in it is rare that i find the format really optimal last i want to touch on the one by one aspect ratio a format that is particularly interesting for instagram posts as your profile is displayed in a tile format of squares if your images are cropped squared to start off with your instagram timeline will look great however i find that most images only look great in one by one when they display a perfectly symmetrical subject or alternatively a subject that is at least photographed head-on it can be a format that looks great as a print of three for your home but it remains to be a very specific aspect ratio that is only suitable in a few instances to sum this up i always would suggest to keep the aspect ratio 2x3 as it is the most versatile or 16x9 if you know you'll be displaying your images mostly on horizontal screens any other crop can be applied once you actually know what you would like to do with the image and then find a suitable image to fit the aspect ratio that is needed for these reasons or maybe because i'm simply ocd i always keep my lock on the cropping tool to avoid ending up with an undefined format that doesn't fit any medium or purpose i really hope this video helps you and if you do like it don't forget to subscribe to our channel and press the like button down below stay tuned if you want to learn more about how to best crop a wildlife picture but before we get into cropping let's first have a quick look at our pixel account i have been shooting a camera with 20.2 megapixels for the past few years which is displayed right here when multiplying the short and long edge of the image to get the total pixel count when you crop your image you physically take pixels away and therefore your size will change how much can we crop an image to retain a suitable quality well that depends on how large you would like your image displayed and how many pixels you start off with here is a rough rule of thumb an a4 print or a 16 inch computer screen will require a pixel count of about 8.5 megapixels an a3 print will require a pixel count of 15 megapixels and an a1 2 a 0 print or let's say a 40 inch tv screen requires a pixel account of nearly 70 megapixels that is when we talk about an outstanding image quality very often prints are quite forgiving though as we don't tend to stand one centimeter away from them and stay at every single detail but rather soak it up at a distance also we have amazing image softwares that increase our pixel count in retrospective such as photoshop or topos gigapixels those tools can help you print a 20-megapixel image way larger than one could have ever dreamed of that being said you might have already noticed that we can crop an image with 45 megapixels for instance way more liberally than an image with only 20. but keep the following two things in mind one larger megapixel cameras tend to display noise more quickly as your pixels are smaller and cannot absorb light as good and 2 cropping might bring your image closer but will not improve the effect of a bouquet on your background as you were not actually physically closer to your subject when you took the picture if you are mainly active on social media those sizes are going to be completely irrelevant to you and you can crop an image much more drastically as pictures are usually getting displayed rather small making your image smaller while keeping the same crop is always an option by resizing them when you export matter of fact i would recommend doing so as social media platforms tend to compress your image upon upload otherwise programs such as adobe lightroom do a much better job and spit out a better looking image when compressing rather than leaving it up to facebook for instance number two cropping rules now let's dive into how to crop images and how not to but who actually gets to decide on that before we get started i just wanted to touch on the difference between cropping and composition of an image cropping is the process of cutting away pixels and information of an image in post-production with the goal to make the subject seem larger or gain a better composition of the image while cropping can involve improving your image's composition the composition can also be achieved by simply getting it right to start off with that being said most cropping rules are therefore basic composition rules leave more space into the direction the animal looks into don't cut your animal around the ankles or knees if you want a close-up make sure you cut it around the body this can sometimes be a bit of a tricky one it might require a few trials and some people say never crop halfway through an animal but i think it can look funky i guess just make sure that it doesn't look like you just lost a body part by accident if something is distracting in the background try and crop it out make sure you get your horizon straight try and provide more space into the direction that has the corner environment so place the animal towards the top of the frame if the foreground looks great and the other way around do not crop too tight and leave space around the animal if the background is not distracting to provide the animal room to breathe and the imagination room to spin a story and if you do want to break the rules do it so outrageously that it feels right again because at the end it is your image to play with and nobody can tell you what to do and what not to number three how cropping can save your image wildlife photography can be quite technical and it truly helps if you know both your camera and the wildlife behavior well but big parts of it remain to be luck and a really quick reaction time on your trigger often when you do get surprised by a situation our composition and focus isn't ideal we're just glad that we caught it at all this is where cropping can save us for instance you can crop vertical if you didn't provide your animal with enough space to look into nobody will know if animals are overlapping awkwardly in your picture crop the overlapping part out or if you happen to clip an animal unfortunate crop it even stronger to make it look like it was intentional if the background or even light conditions are difficult crop it tight to focus on the part of the image that looked beautiful all in all you see that cropping can be quite a science in itself keeping a certain structure in aspect ratio helps you to make up your mind and provide you with guidelines on how to crop the image in the first place let me know if you have any other approach to it in the comment section below and how cropping works for you until the next time bye bye

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 22,909

Keywords: bird photo editing, bird photography, bird photography post processing, photoshop learning, photoshop tutorial, trending videos, wildlife photo editing, wildlife photo editing in lightroom, wildlife photo editing tips, wildlife photography

Id: uEHmChy59f8

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021