5 Replies Latest reply: Apr 2, 2012 9:26 AM by Tai Luxon RSS

    Just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool

    jbsurv Community Member

      I just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool and found the renewed emphasis in Photoshop in making the Photo-finishing tools more effective - well it was most encouraging. I really like the Straighten tool, the new Photo Composition Overlays, and the new option to NOT delete the the cropped pixels.See the review here at thePhotoFinishes.com. But I ran into two cropping anomalies.

      1)When the Crop tool is chosen the selected Photo Composition overlay does not immediately appear - only when you start to crop or click on the image does the Photo Composition overlay, in this case chosen to be the Triangle Rule, appear. Did any one else have this result? Is this the intended behavior?

      2)When the Straighten option is used on a near vertical line the Crop tool did put it on the vertical - but itappeared just a tad off. I dismissed the results as my misapplying the vertical straigten guide line. But on other imageverticals I got the same impression. Anybody else have this problem.

       

      The Operating environ is Windows 7 latest service pack updates on a Gateway Dual core with 4GB of memory and plenty of hardrive free space 330GB.

       

      So far Photoshop 6 has been pretty stable - but I am looking at the Camera Raw, Blur Gallery, Wide Angle lens and other photofinishing features.

        • 1. Re: Just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool
          Trevor.Dennis Community Member

          The Crop tool overlays are a bit like religions — with so many options, which one is right?

           

          The overlay does come up and stay up as soon as you nudge any handle. The overlay is not particularly easy to see though.   We obviously need to strike a balance with such a feature because if it overwhelms the image, it becomes self-defeating, but it would be nice if we could change its colour.

           

          (This comes under a frequently asked for update for Path lines.)

           

          Did you try bring up the grid to check that vertical?  It was bound to be right. 

          • 2. Re: Just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool
            jbsurv Community Member

            Yes, I like the idea of being able to change the color of the guides. If you tracked my review you can see that the photo composition guides are on the margin of being visble. But there are situations when I want the overlay to come immediately on. So then I can O and SHIFT+O through the various overlay guides.

             

            As for the vertical it was the grid that led me to conclude that the straighten was a touch off.

            • 3. Re: Just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool
              Trevor.Dennis Community Member

              You can zoom to actual pixel size while placing the ruler, and the screen automatically pans when you drag the ruler to the edge of the screen.

              • 4. Re: Just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool
                delphenich

                While cropping and zooming in on an object have you then tried to use the keyboard arrows to move the cropped area, well not so much fun, it auto scrolls you to the middle of the cropped area everytime you hit an arrow key.

                • 5. Re: Just did a review of Photoshop 6 beta's Crop Tool
                  Tai Luxon Adobe Employee

                  The overlay only shows up after you activate the crop in order to provide an additional visual cue between the inactive and active states. A simple click in the crop box or hitting the Enter key will activate the crop if it is not active.

                   

                  I am unable to reproduce the mentioned issue with the straighten tool. Sometimes it is difficult to line up the straighten tool perfectly with what I want to be vertical though, and as a result the rotation is maybe a tenth of a degree or so off of what I really wanted, but it is faithfully rotating the image as I am specifying. Are you seeing a difference much larger than that which can not be attributed to the accuracy with which you lay down the straighten line?

                   

                  delphenich, you may prefer the behavior you get if you disable the "Auto Center Preview" option in the gear icon flyout.