What I WISH I Knew About Cropping Photos SOONER

[@railhead5771]

Hi David -- you mention Lightroom several times, but (unless I missed it) you don't mention that cropping in Lightroom is non-destructive, and does not 'throw away' any pixels. It is true that if you export at that crop you don't use those pixels, and therefore, as you say, you reduce your resolution, but you haven't ruined your image.

[@LandscapePhotographyUniversity]

Correct it is non destructive but once exported it loses the resolution

[@gastropodahimsa]

The area that remains is unchanged. If you then "enlarge" the remaining area, obviously the individual pixels that comprise that area get bigger. Cropping gets rid of what you don't want to begin with, it doesn't change anything else.

[@LandscapePhotographyUniversity]

Why would you not enlarge the cropped area

[@don7117]

Cropping doesn't change resolution or clarity, as long as you keep the image at the same magnification as the original. Same as setting your camera at 3:2 vs 16:9. I specifically switched to FF so I could crop and still print at a decent size because the image is so large. The crop does NOTHING to the resolution or clarity as long as not printing above 100%, which applies for any image, whether cropped or not.

[@geraintlyons]

Not correct. Your camera sensor captures at a specific native resolution, typically in a 3:2 aspect ratio for full-frame. Cropping removes portions of the image, effectively reducing the number of pixels available. This means you'll have fewer pixels to work with for printing or zooming in. The same principle applies to in-camera cropping vs. post-processing cropping. Regardless of when you crop, you're discarding image data.

[@anthony-qm3pn]

I’m planning to buy a MacBook Pro M3 18GB RAM, more than enough ram for doing small metal layers, and stitching 3 to 4 photographs together to make a panorama, upgrading to 36GB RAM is expensive, or do I really need to bite the bullet

[@LandscapePhotographyUniversity]

I had the same dilemma and you’ll be glad you did it. I save so much time

[@activ8me3]

Strange theory.

[@NickInHell666]

This is horrible advice. Lightroom is non-destructive and there can often be a photo inside a photo. Learning the benefit of higher resolution cameras and even cameras with 24mp in terms of cropping is important. You can significantly crop a 24mp image and retain all of the clarity other than a very large print. You can easily crop 30% and have a crystal clear 8x10 print with 24mp. Understanding and explaining benefits of equipment is far more helpful than claiming cropping ruins an image. Again horrible and misleading advice. I have a 33mp camera and can crop 60% and still have print a perfectly clear 8x10. Bad information

[@LandscapePhotographyUniversity]

But could you have that as a 16x24? Or larger?