The subject of cropping an image comes up frequently when I'm talking to other photographers. Whether it's wildlife or landscapes, all photographers need to know the limitations so not to over crop an image. The more pixels your working with, the more flexibility you have while cropping an image. Your video clearly explains the limitations and provides a good "rule of thumb" through practical experience. Excellent tips and images Brent.
I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on how and why you crop. I’ve always struggled with what is the “right way” to crop my photos. This is a great help for me.👍
Thanks for sharing! Your point about thinking for yourself and not letting others dictate your artistic vision is most important. Hope you and the fam are doing well!
Great topic! I’ve been learning and shooting for a few years now. Thousands of photos at this point! This really helps me understanding cropping guidelines and why. I want to start printing, but I find that whole process intimidating. Please do a video on how you prepare the file, the crop, and what companies you use. I’m stuck!
Very informative video on cropping. Thank you. Another way I often use to get separation from a distracting background like in the Kinglet image is to mask the bird and slightly dehaze just the bird. It gives it a more solid, rich tone against the blurred background and adds 3-dimensionality.
I had not even thought about using 2160 to accommodate for 4K screens. I always crop down or resize to 2048 since that is the upper limit for Facebook to prevent compression
I crop for maximum impact. Sometimes that’s tight, sometimes it’s not. Deciding what’s a distraction and what is not. That’s my basic “rules” for cropping. A good start is to ask yourself “what do I like about this scene?” Just my .02
Good educational video! I almost always crop for composition purposes with my bird photos, but didn’t really understand the pixel size component of cropping. So the 2160 rule is only for the vertical pixels, not horizontal as well?
Well done video. It would be interesting to see a comparison (although maybe overkill) with cropping with a 45 mp sensor vs. a 24mp sensor. Especially for photographing wildlife, cropping is necessary. With me doing mostly landscape, it is an advantage as to having more time to compose/frame an image. But, the final image still takes careful cropping. There are often pictures within the picture that I see when processing a photo that I overlooked in the field.
Interesting video with food for thought. For cropping, I really like the flexibility of Lightroom over Photoshop. In PS, every crop/resize needs to be saved as a separate file. Especially when you want to do re-edits, the .psd files take up a lot of space. But with Lightroom you can just make virtual copies with different crop settings that will allow for re-edits with essentially just one RAW file. I still sent photos over to PS for more complex edits and save+import those as psd/tiff. However, that is not the case for every shot.
very helpful. i struggle with cropping at times. Now..question.... as you were dragging your crop tool across the image, the little box showed your size in px as you moved the crop tool. How do you get it to how that in px? Mine is showing it in inches and I cant seem to find where to change that to show px.
I've been following the 2160 rule and it works pretty well. I have a 4k monitor now so it gets really obvious when you've cropped too much and you are losing fine detail. In the far, far future when everyone has 8k monitors we can go back and look at our "low-res" 4k images. Maybe by then we'll have 100MP full frame cameras, which will be awesome. With small songbirds, it's really rare to get so close you have to do minimal cropping. Any time you get either kinglet species that close is a win, so make the most of it! At some point you just have to anticipate a ton of bare branches in these shots in the fall and winter and just live with it if the bird looks awesome, which it did in your case. Have you tried the lens blur feature in LR? It can do a pretty good job on something like that picture.
Yep. That lets me know how much I can crop with any camera, or in crop mode, etc. It's just a solid guideline for my personal resolution acceptance levels.
Thanks for the video! I'm curious how much DPI plays into your cropping decision when you want to print something. The 4K limit makes sense for viewing digitally but how do you adjust that when looking to print. Are you always aiming for 300 DPI (or more?) or are lower DPIs acceptable for certain print sizes/viewing distances?
When I want to print something, that's usually a different workflow. I do stay at 300 dpi, but I usually try not to crop as hard as I might for something on social media. Though, I have still printed normal size prints with images that are only 2160 on the long edge and I've been fine with it if it's a good image overall. That's just me though. A lot of people are much more stringent or picky about there images for printing.
Question, I understand the 2160 rule and the 4x5 ratio that is commonly used in social media…. but I’m confused with also the 2048 resolution Facebook that everyone seems to say is what does t cause FB to mess up your posts. If I resize images to 2160 that will be over the acceptable resolution for Facebook and therefore Facebook will muddy up my images correct? Or have you not experienced this. Also I’m guessing your using a 45mp sensor not a 24
I don't really do much on FB anymore, but if their size limit is 2048 and I'm posting something that's 2160, then there really shouldn't be that much compression happening, so I doubt it would look too bad in that case. And yes, most of the time I'm using a 45mp camera, but I still have and use my R6II as well. I follow the same guideline for myself regardless of sensor size, so obviously sticking to that means I can't/don't crop as much on my R6II; however, there's still plenty of room for me to crop down to 2160 on my R6II images if I feel I need to.
@@BrentHall thx for the info. Makes sense for sure. I watched this and a few other videos to understand how cropping, compression, and resolution all work. I had an R6, then an R5, and thought about the R6ii but stayed away because of sensor readout speed and rolling shutter. (I shoot sports) so recently I bought the R5ii and as much as I love it. I also find it doesn’t handle ISO above 4000 that well. So now I’m thinking to go to an R1 because it handles high ISO very well. My concern is will I miss the capability…. It looks like on a 24MP sensor it’s safe to crop 30-35 percent without loosing too much detail. Thoughts
Is this video a 'total load of crop'? Certainly not! 😂 your content is always informative and creative, let alone beautiful images. Zooming back a bit with a zoom lens as opposed to a prime lens wifi means you have to zoom with your feet, which isn't always possible, allow you to room to crop whilst still using a good composition, so when you're out in the field try to remember to account for that.
At 14:18, that bird, while you laughed is about what I get. I do not have those other birds, so thanks for sharing.
Awesome picture editing advice... appreciate your knowledge on the subject... great pictures Brent
Man I really liked this picture on instagram. So cool you got that close, the cropping helps but the environmental shot is beautiful for a wall print.
The subject of cropping an image comes up frequently when I'm talking to other photographers. Whether it's wildlife or landscapes, all photographers need to know the limitations so not to over crop an image. The more pixels your working with, the more flexibility you have while cropping an image. Your video clearly explains the limitations and provides a good "rule of thumb" through practical experience. Excellent tips and images Brent.
Hey thanks Alan, I really appreciate the kind words!
I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on how and why you crop. I’ve always struggled with what is the “right way” to crop my photos. This is a great help for me.👍
You're welcome, I'm glad it helped!
Thanks for sharing! Your point about thinking for yourself and not letting others dictate your artistic vision is most important. Hope you and the fam are doing well!
Hey thanks, I appreciate it, and glad you enjoyed it. We're all doing quite well atm. 😊
Valuable information on an important subject... well done. Love having the cranes at Bernardo again!
Hey thanks Mike, I appreciate it! And yeah, it's awesome to have so much activity up there at Bernardo!
Great topic! I’ve been learning and shooting for a few years now. Thousands of photos at this point! This really helps me understanding cropping guidelines and why. I want to start printing, but I find that whole process intimidating. Please do a video on how you prepare the file, the crop, and what companies you use. I’m stuck!
Glad to hear it is still okay to be creative and an added bonus of a good image size to share it. Thanks
Very informative video on cropping. Thank you. Another way I often use to get separation from a distracting background like in the Kinglet image is to mask the bird and slightly dehaze just the bird. It gives it a more solid, rich tone against the blurred background and adds 3-dimensionality.
I had not even thought about using 2160 to accommodate for 4K screens. I always crop down or resize to 2048 since that is the upper limit for Facebook to prevent compression
I crop for maximum impact. Sometimes that’s tight, sometimes it’s not. Deciding what’s a distraction and what is not. That’s my basic “rules” for cropping. A good start is to ask yourself “what do I like about this scene?” Just my .02
Yas.
Lots of ideas here!
I'm glad it helped, thanks for watching!
Thank you for this video. Very enlightening!!
You're welcome, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Good educational video! I almost always crop for composition purposes with my bird photos, but didn’t really understand the pixel size component of cropping. So the 2160 rule is only for the vertical pixels, not horizontal as well?
Correct, only for the vertical. This way, no matter the ratio or orientation, it will display at 100% on a 4K screen.
@@BrentHall thank you and happy holidays to you and Camera Lady!
Well done video. It would be interesting to see a comparison (although maybe overkill) with cropping with a 45 mp sensor vs. a 24mp sensor. Especially for photographing wildlife, cropping is necessary. With me doing mostly landscape, it is an advantage as to having more time to compose/frame an image. But, the final image still takes careful cropping. There are often pictures within the picture that I see when processing a photo that I overlooked in the field.
Great Video!! I totally agree.
Many thanks!
Interesting video with food for thought. For cropping, I really like the flexibility of Lightroom over Photoshop. In PS, every crop/resize needs to be saved as a separate file. Especially when you want to do re-edits, the .psd files take up a lot of space. But with Lightroom you can just make virtual copies with different crop settings that will allow for re-edits with essentially just one RAW file. I still sent photos over to PS for more complex edits and save+import those as psd/tiff. However, that is not the case for every shot.
Wonderful show ~ thank you ~
Great video. Like the story telling using 3 crops.
Many thanks!
very helpful. i struggle with cropping at times. Now..question.... as you were dragging your crop tool across the image, the little box showed your size in px as you moved the crop tool. How do you get it to how that in px? Mine is showing it in inches and I cant seem to find where to change that to show px.
In Photoshop, I have Windows, go to edit, preferences, Units and Rulers and change to pixels.
@@SteveHaben thanks.. ill check it out later today. Im on a mac but sure its the same. some reason i wasnt thinking of that lol.. thanks
This is sage advice. Thanks!!!!
Very helpful! Thanks!
You're welcome! Glad it helped!
I've been following the 2160 rule and it works pretty well. I have a 4k monitor now so it gets really obvious when you've cropped too much and you are losing fine detail. In the far, far future when everyone has 8k monitors we can go back and look at our "low-res" 4k images. Maybe by then we'll have 100MP full frame cameras, which will be awesome. With small songbirds, it's really rare to get so close you have to do minimal cropping. Any time you get either kinglet species that close is a win, so make the most of it! At some point you just have to anticipate a ton of bare branches in these shots in the fall and winter and just live with it if the bird looks awesome, which it did in your case. Have you tried the lens blur feature in LR? It can do a pretty good job on something like that picture.
Thank you
You're welcome, thanks for watching!
Thanks, Brent! Do you apply the same rule regardless of the camera? i.e. 24mp r6ii vs 45mp r5
Yep. That lets me know how much I can crop with any camera, or in crop mode, etc. It's just a solid guideline for my personal resolution acceptance levels.
Thanks for the video! I'm curious how much DPI plays into your cropping decision when you want to print something. The 4K limit makes sense for viewing digitally but how do you adjust that when looking to print. Are you always aiming for 300 DPI (or more?) or are lower DPIs acceptable for certain print sizes/viewing distances?
When I want to print something, that's usually a different workflow. I do stay at 300 dpi, but I usually try not to crop as hard as I might for something on social media. Though, I have still printed normal size prints with images that are only 2160 on the long edge and I've been fine with it if it's a good image overall. That's just me though. A lot of people are much more stringent or picky about there images for printing.
@BrentHall thanks for your thoughts!
Question, I understand the 2160 rule and the 4x5 ratio that is commonly used in social media…. but I’m confused with also the 2048 resolution Facebook that everyone seems to say is what does t cause FB to mess up your posts. If I resize images to 2160 that will be over the acceptable resolution for Facebook and therefore Facebook will muddy up my images correct? Or have you not experienced this.
Also I’m guessing your using a 45mp sensor not a 24
I don't really do much on FB anymore, but if their size limit is 2048 and I'm posting something that's 2160, then there really shouldn't be that much compression happening, so I doubt it would look too bad in that case.
And yes, most of the time I'm using a 45mp camera, but I still have and use my R6II as well. I follow the same guideline for myself regardless of sensor size, so obviously sticking to that means I can't/don't crop as much on my R6II; however, there's still plenty of room for me to crop down to 2160 on my R6II images if I feel I need to.
@@BrentHall thx for the info. Makes sense for sure. I watched this and a few other videos to understand how cropping, compression, and resolution all work. I had an R6, then an R5, and thought about the R6ii but stayed away because of sensor readout speed and rolling shutter. (I shoot sports) so recently I bought the R5ii and as much as I love it. I also find it doesn’t handle ISO above 4000 that well. So now I’m thinking to go to an R1 because it handles high ISO very well. My concern is will I miss the capability…. It looks like on a 24MP sensor it’s safe to crop 30-35 percent without loosing too much detail.
Thoughts
Great video
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
I crop daily, usually in the morning. 😂
😆🤣
I’m glad you got sense humor, you rock Brent!
😆
I’m plagued by this constantly can’t wait to watch
The best advice comes at last: Do it a lot, then you will learn.
Is this video a 'total load of crop'? Certainly not! 😂 your content is always informative and creative, let alone beautiful images. Zooming back a bit with a zoom lens as opposed to a prime lens wifi means you have to zoom with your feet, which isn't always possible, allow you to room to crop whilst still using a good composition, so when you're out in the field try to remember to account for that.
Very useful! Thanks.
You're welcome, thanks for watching!