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Crop to specified width and height


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Thanks for the quick reply. It is a great feature to have and kind of a deal breaker for me for everyday use.

 

I use this to crop to certain dimensions for print. For example in photoshop I have presets for the different column widths in the newspaper I work for. Really speeds up workflow.

 

Other than this request though the application is very impressive. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the quick reply. It is a great feature to have and kind of a deal breaker for me for everyday use.

 

I use this to crop to certain dimensions for print. For example in photoshop I have presets for the different column widths in the newspaper I work for. Really speeds up workflow.

 

Other than this request though the application is very impressive. 

 

 

I agree with @capephotos. Being able to specifically set the crop dimensions is very useful, and needed in quite a few situations.

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  • 1 month later...

The crop tool, in my opinion, is cumbersome and needs lots of work as it exist today and I just installed the latest update. Unless, I'm missing something. I want to be able to open an image, lets say, it is 12x8". I then want to crop an area of that image to 6x4". I can select the 6x4 preset but that will only give me 1/4 of the original image. I want a much larger area of my original to be crop to a finished dimension of 6X4. Plus, even if I select the 6x4 preset and the drag the crop area out, it is no longer 6x4, there is no way to constrain the 6x4 field and yes, I have tried the other definitions, constrain, exact etc. and they are no better. I hate to keep comparing but, this is what you are up against, the crop tool in PS and camera raw is how this should operate. Simple and quick. contained crop area and resampling in one step.

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I am trying out the newly released beta .. my problem with the crop tool is that I can´t seem to reposition the crop area by simply dragging the crop box ... or using my arrow keys. Isn't dragging the crop box around a pretty standard feature? Perhaps this is fixed in the new beta that came out today? I can set the dimensions just fine .. but once they are set, I can't reposition to the area of the image that I want to crop. Maybe I am missing something. Each time I try to move the crop outline, the whole crop disappears, and I have to start over setting the crop up again.

 

UPDATE: Just checked the new beta release .. and the crop issue of repositioning has indeed been fixed. Thanks Serif! It was driving me crazy yesterday trying to reposition the crop area.

Frank Stonehouse

Morelia, Mexico

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  • 3 weeks later...

Cannot create a specific crop size with PPI.  Adding a preset crop mearly names it, but there dosn't seem to be any way to actually create the preset paramiters such as final size and resolution.  The preset I created dose not constrain the aspect ration unless I hold the shift key, and if I do try to crop an image it resizes to the new crop size rather than cropping to the preset size.  Also, there just dosent seem to be any way to change the resolution. 

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Hi I have a few problems with the crop tool.

 

I tried adding a custom preset of 1920x1080 but it asked for the name and then I thought it'd ask for the size, but it just used the size it was on when I clicked the add preset, so now I have a preset with 2x2 pixels instead.

I have tried selecting the preset and then clicking on delete preset but it doesn't delete it.

 

I also can't figure out how to edit presets. I'd like to just be able to select the preset, change the sizes and then click on add preset and name it the same to have it overwrite it, but I can't edit the sizes at all.

 

Another strange thing is if I click on the crop tool and select a preset I cannot move the crop box around by clicking and dragging. All that happens is it starts drawing a new crop box.

It's easily got around by clicking on crop tool and then dragging to create any sized crop box and then selecting the preset you want. Then you can click and drag to move it but it'd be nice to not have to do that lol.

 

Those are the only things that have been annoying me so far, the rest of the program is great! :D

 

ps. Im using the latest version (I downloaded it about an hour before posting this to see if the cropping problems had been fixed).

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  • 8 months later...

I'm in trial on v1.4. While I like the RAW integration, I can't figure out how do what I want with crop.

 

What I need it photoshops crop and resize. I can set a width, to say 600px, and then draw a crop window. It will crop and resize with the width set to 600. Our web site had all images at 600px with variable height. So this feature allows us to crop and resize in one operation. 

 

It's the reason I've stuck with photoshop for the last 10 years. Nobody else seems to be able to do it.

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Another product bites the dust. Luckily CS3 still runs on El Capitan. It's just way to cumbersome to do simple things.

 

I also don't like the way text fields work. Settings don't stick, and there's no highlight/backspace to clear the field. So in Affinity:

 

Select Crop

Draw Crop Window -> Click

Document -> resize image

Highlight size , delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, type in 600px

Click resize

Export

 

In Photoshop:

 

Select Crop (my crop width:600px is sticky)

Draw Crop Window -> click (auto resize to width of 600px)

Save for Web

 

Takes 3x longer to resize a perfect image that doesnt need adjustment

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I agree. I frequently have to crop to specific ratios. Adding them as presets works, but once selected, the outline doesn't stay at that ratio unless I'm very careful when repositioning or resizing. Too often it changes and I have to begin all over again.

Could we have the outline "lock" to the selected ratio while resizing?

Author and Publisher of novels, poetry and children's books. deon.ca

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  • Staff

I agree. I frequently have to crop to specific ratios. Adding them as presets works, but once selected, the outline doesn't stay at that ratio unless I'm very careful when repositioning or resizing. Too often it changes and I have to begin all over again.

Could we have the outline "lock" to the selected ratio while resizing?

 

Hi Rory, I've tried adding a ratio as a preset and the crop boundaries stay constrained here regardless of which handle is used to resize. Are you up to date with the most recent App Store version?

 

I agree with other posts requesting actual size with pixels per inch as crop constraints. EG: 2400 px wide, 2400 px high, 72 px per inch.

 

It's not exactly what you're asking for, but if you change the working DPI of your document (using Resize Document, uncheck resample) then choose Absolute Dimensions as your crop method, you can input a size (for example 7 x 5 Inches) and it will produce the correct pixel crop based on your DPI. But yes, being able to specify an explicit DPI for metric cropping would be much quicker.

 

What you're referring to (2400px by 2400px by 72DPI) doesn't quite make sense; did you mean specifying physical size like Inches or CM? For example 8in by 10in at 200DPI.

 

I also don't like the way text fields work. Settings don't stick, and there's no highlight/backspace to clear the field.

 

I agree that the text fields could be easier to work, I don't quite follow the complicated routine of having to delete every character individually though. You can just do this:

 

  • Highlight or (even quicker) double click the text entry
  • Type your new value (the old one will be automatically overwritten)

 

You can do that for your Width entry, then hit Tab to highlight the Height entry and type your new height straight away (the old value will automatically disappear).

 

 

Hope some of that helps, given the discussion here there will likely be another cropping video that covers some of this in depth. Thanks for all your comments!

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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Ah-Ha! There it is. And it works perfectly. Bravo!

I guess, since I was using the MAS versions for a while, I didn't see it added. This alone will save me seconds of frustration (really, just seconds?). Remember, it adds up.

BTW, AD and AP have completely eliminated Adobe PS/IL from my workflow. Since I create books, I can't wait for Publisher.

An aside: I know what you're doing is not easy. Thanks.

Author and Publisher of novels, poetry and children's books. deon.ca

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James, I hate to always be comparing to PS, but that is the tool AP would replace for me. At any rate, in PS, I can specify length and width dimensions in the supported PS units, including pixels. If I want something for a game texture, for example, it has to be in 2^x pixel dimensions such as 1024x1024. The 72 px per inch just constrains it to screen resolution which is helpful for things displayed on screen.

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James, I hate to always be comparing to PS, but that is the tool AP would replace for me. At any rate, in PS, I can specify length and width dimensions in the supported PS units, including pixels. If I want something for a game texture, for example, it has to be in 2^x pixel dimensions such as 1024x1024. The 72 px per inch just constrains it to screen resolution which is helpful for things displayed on screen.

Hi Asha, I don't have Photo in front of me (on mobile here) so apologies if this is incorrect, but as far as I know the DPI should have no relevance at all if you are wanting to crop to exact pixels. It is only used as a way of determining pixel resolutions for practical measurements like Cm and In. A 2048x2048 texture is always going to be 2048x2048 regardless of DPI. You can crop to explicit pixels in Photo (I believe it's named Absolute Dimensions, just use pixels as your measurement). And I cannot test this at the moment, but if you are cropping to specific pixel dimensions in Photo, the document's DPI should not matter at all. It could be set to 72 or 300, but it should only influence the crop boundary if you're cropping to inches, centimetres, etc.

 

Hope that helps! Will be able to take a further look on Monday in front of Photo.

 

James

Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader

@JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more
Official Affinity Photo tutorials

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James, sorry to say it is just so unintuitive for me :(

 

I was only able to get it to work by creating my crop in Absolute Dimensions using pixel units. I'm not sure I understand why the default "Unconstrained" does not allow me to enter manual settings--I guess I am expecting it to jump automatically to an absolute as soon as I go type something in those boxes. The save presets seem to work the same as PS.

 

Even if my own example doesn't warrant it, I think one good reason for adding the px/in to the controls is so that a document can be resampled in the crop. If you still want the option for it to default to the document dpi, you can allow the user to leave the px/in blank.

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  • 10 months later...

Its now nearly 12 months since the last post on this subject, and I think there is still a problem, I'm new to Affinity, thought it was great,but this cropping sucks, its pointless, I need a piece of software that does what I want, not the other way round, it either needs solving, or I need a refund

Worst is you can't get to contact the company in a straight forward way

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I have to agree with last post. I'm using latest trial version and although the software is feature rich and fairly intuitive, especially if familiar with PS, the cropping feature is appallingly badly conceived. I have to produce multiple jpegs of a fixed size and resolution and in spite of viewing numerous tutorials on cropping, this appears to be largely a matter of slow and painful trial and error. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this - or can someone provide a clear explanation of how to set a fixed dimension at a fixed resolution and save this as a cropping tool?

 

Many thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

As noted in the other thread, it is perfectly possible as long as you choose the 'Custom Ratio' option rather than the 'Absolute Dimensions' option.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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  • 3 months later...

Wanted to chime in with another request to improve the cropping functionality in Affinity Photo. The major missing functionality, which I've seen mentioned in many threads, is being able to simultaneously crop AND resize an image to given custom dimensions. For example, I think what HowardP is getting at here:

 

I have to agree with last post. I'm using latest trial version and although the software is feature rich and fairly intuitive, especially if familiar with PS, the cropping feature is appallingly badly conceived. I have to produce multiple jpegs of a fixed size and resolution and in spite of viewing numerous tutorials on cropping, this appears to be largely a matter of slow and painful trial and error. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this - or can someone provide a clear explanation of how to set a fixed dimension at a fixed resolution and save this as a cropping tool?

 

Many thanks!

 

Scenario: I have an image that's say, 3000 x 3000 px. I want to crop it to 1100 x 619 px. With the current behavior, if I enter dimensions of 1100 x 619 pixels, I'm only able to select exactly that many pixels from the original image size. But that doesn't make sense to me — I very rarely (probably never!) want to capture exactly the middle 1100 x 619 out of 3000 x 3000 pixels. Rather, what I want to do here is make *any* size selection that maintains the 1100 x 619 (16:9) ratio, and then have the resulting crop resized to those dimensions.

 

It seems that this more common workflow currently requires double the steps — first I'd have to crop to a custom ratio, then resize to the correct custom dimensions. I understand it's possible to do using this multi-step approach, but still seems like unnecessary extra steps, particularly if I have a target size but not an easily reducible ratio…then I might be typing in the same numbers for both ratio and dimension. More elegant solution would be to have a way to do the crop + size all in one step, as I can currently do in Photoshop. (I do appreciate that Serif is opinionated and doesn't hew to Photoshop conventions just because, but in this case I think PS cropping just works better!) Basically, this would just mean treating the custom dimensions not as absolute pixels as a subset of the current image at its current size, but a ratio that determines the target size of the final cropped image.

 

It's possible I'm still missing something re: current behavior, but this is one of the very first things I noticed when using Affinity Photo and given how core of a feature cropping is, hope it can be improved in a future update!

 

And it's not just me — so far I've found at least three other threads that seem to be after this feature:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/12724-resize-image-with-locked-aspect-ratio/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/32049-cropping-in-affinity-photo/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/28707-crop-with-dimensions-resizing/

 

Thanks!

Brendan

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Hi Brendan, I totally get the crop and resize request especially when editing many images to consistent widths/heights. The only thing I'd be concerned with is loosing control over how pixels are interpreted. I wouldn't want to loose that control which i have now for speed and convenience ( I want both! :) )

 

Regards

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