Cropping and straightening

Cropping removes unwanted areas of your image for either practical reasons or better composition. Straightening simply means correcting a crooked image.

About cropping

Use cropping for practical reasons or aesthetic reasons equally. For instance, an unwanted object or person can be excluded which might otherwise detract from your desired image. Aesthetically, you can balance image content in your composition so that it is more appealing to the eye.

Affinity Photo lets you crop unconstrained or to original or custom aspect ratios. For print or web delivery, you can specify common print sizes (e.g., 6" x 4") or create pixel-accurate custom crop regions, respectively.

If snapping is active, the crop area can snap to page edges and guides when being resized or moved.

Original

Portrait

Straightened

16x9

Absolute

6x4

Crop modes

When cropping, you may wish to work unconstrained or to specific ratios or absolute dimensions. These are some of the options available:

You can crop to absolute pixel dimensions by entering pixel width and height values adjacent to the Mode setting.

Straighten mode

When activated, dragging on the page will orient the photo to align it with the drawn line. We recommend using a reference within your photo such as the horizon or the edge of a building.

Compositional overlays

If you're cropping to remove unwanted subject matter in your image, compositional overlays can be ignored. However, if you're looking for better composition, one of several overlays can be used.

You can quickly toggle between these overlays by pressing O.

Holding hides the crop area overlay.

Crop Tool To crop an image:
  1. From the Tools panel on the left, select the Crop Tool.
  2. From the context toolbar, select a crop mode from the Mode pop-up menu.
  3. Adjust the context toolbar settings.
  4. Drag a corner or edge handle on the grid to resize the grid to suit, then reposition the grid by dragging within it.
  5. From the context toolbar, click Apply.
To uncrop the cropped image:
Crop Tool Straighten Tool To straighten an image:
  1. From the Tools panel on the left, select the Crop Tool.
  2. From the context toolbar, select Straighten.
  3. Drag on the image to define the new alignment.
  4. From the context toolbar, click Apply.
Presets manager To save crop settings as a preset:
  1. Adjust the context toolbar settings.
  2. From the context toolbar, choose Presets manager Presets, click the More menu and select Create Preset.
  3. Type a name for the crop preset and (optional) choose a category to put it in, then click Create.
Presets manager To delete a crop preset:
  1. From the context toolbar, choose Presets manager Presets.
  2. Right click a preset and choose Delete Preset.
Presets manager To manage, import and export presets:

SEE ALSO: