In LR or PS, crop a photo to specific dimension in pixels

[David Callow]

I have many shots where I have different viewpoints, with the aim of stitching into a panorama, and each viewpoint has several exposures for HDR.  I shoot off a monopod, so the panos of each exposure are slightly different in size and then PS HDR Pro won't process them unless they are all the same size.  I have tried to crop very carefully, but I just cannot move the mouse accurately enough.  I'm hoping for a dialogue box where I enter the size in pixels.  Hopefull this would be in LR, but if not, PS would do.

[ManiacJoe]

Neither LR nor PS makes this easy to do.

In LR, you first use the crop tool to set the shape of your desired image, then use the Export dialog to resize the cropped image to the exact size you want in pixels.

[Laura Shoe · Accepted solution]

As ManiacJoe says, to make photos an exact size in pixels, you'll crop to your desired proportions in LR and then specify size in pixels in Export. I'd suggest using Quick Develop in the Library module to get to the same proportions. In Grid view, select all your photos, then in the Quick Develop panel click on the triangle to the right of Saved Preset and when it appears, click on the dropdown next to Crop Ratio, Enter Custom, and type in your proportions. (If you want, for example, 2582 pixels wide by 4527 pixels high, then  type in 2582x4527. LR will change this to 2.582x4.527, but that's OK because these are the same proportions. Once you hit OK, LR will crop all your photos. Next, if necessary (maybe not), go into the crop tool in Develop (R) and go photo by photo fine tuning which portion of each photo is cropped off.  Finally, export all of them, setting pixel size in the Resize to Fit section.

Here's a video tutorial that shows using the Quick Develop panel for quick cropping of many photos.

[johnrellis]

If you want to avoid the extra step of exporting the photos, try the Any Crop plugin -- it will let you define a crop preset with an exact pixel size, which you can apply to each of your photos.

[Conrad C]

I might have a suggestion for solving this, but first a couple of questions to make sure we’re solving the right problem:

• Because they were shot on a monopod, do the images need to be aligned precisely for later HDR merging in addition to being cropped identically?
• Do all of the images need to be cropped from the center of each image, or do you want to control where each set of HDR images gets cropped?

[David Callow]

Hi Conrad,

The stitched images just need to be the same size in order to go into Adobe HDR Pro. They do not need to be aligned. HDR Pro will pick out the common image in each pano.

The stitched images only vary by a few pixels in each dimension. I just haven’t been able to control the mouse delicately enough to crop each one to the needed pixel count. So what need to do is just shave each one by a very small amount.

Thanks for your interest and help here.

David

[Conrad C]

OK. Then the more complex idea I had, which would have involved Photoshop, probably isn't needed. It sounds like John Ellis' AnyCrop plugin (which he suggested above) might be best. I haven't tried it, but it looks like it should work as long as you select Exact Size.

You could first try using the Lightroom crop tool and setting pixel dimensions in the Export dialog box, but I've seen cases where Lightroom doesn't export precisely the pixel dimensions asked for, even when the Crop tool and Export dimensions are set to the same pixel dimensions. If you run into that bug, then try AnyCrop.

[David Callow]

Thanks Conrad. I plan to try his plug in.