How To Crop Images In Photoshop: A Step-By-Step Guide

Adobe Photoshop has long been one of the most commonly-used pieces of image editing software around. You can do a lot with Photoshop, from well known tasks like image resizing and color adjustments tothings you probably didn’t know you could do,like using it to identify fonts or handle basic math to save on time. Having dozens of ways to perform various tasks means there are somebig common mistakesthat can be made when using it. But as long as you know what you’re doing, Photoshop can be just as useful as many of thealternative optionsout there.

Cropping or trimming the edges of an image to re-frame the composition, excise unwanted elements, fit visuals into a specific aspect ratio format, etc. — is about as basic as an image editing task can be. Performing the action in Photoshop is essentially the same as it would be in any other image editor, but this is Photoshop we’re talking about. So while you can still simply crop an image and be done with it, you can use a multitude of other options and features to do a fair bit more than that. If you want to. But let’s start with the fundamentals.

cropping image photoshop

Basic cropping

If all you want to do is crop an image to fit a specific size or frame the subject in a particular way, it’s a very simple process.

Though if you want to do a bit more with your cropping, or prefer even more nuanced control, you can start digging into the Crop Options.

before and after extended canvas dimensions

More cropping options

Using Crop Options isn’t all that necessary for basic image reframing, but it can be useful in certain situations.

Photoshop being Photoshop, though, means that there are even more tricks available to you when you decide it’s time to crop an image.

Photoshop crop tool rotating image

Additional cropping features

As with regular Crop Options, these features won’t be useful every time you crop, but they can come in handy or save you time in some projects.

Cropping can also be used to increase the size of the canvas by expanding the crop window beyond the edges of the image. Without Content-Aware turned on, this will result in blank space outside the original image.