Why You Should Never Underestimate the Power of Cropping

Last Updated on 02/12/2017 by Chris Gampat

When you’re going through Lightroom or Capture One 10 while looking at your images, there’s a big chance you’re not using the majority of the images from your shooting session. Most people casually glance over them and, instead of trying to find a way to make them into something better, just move on. If you’re on a deadline that makes sense, but if you’ve got some time you should consider cropping your photos. Lots of photographers don’t ever consider just what cropping can do for you. It’s one of the most powerful tools of photo editors at big news wires and can help you to create a better final product overall.

Let’s take a look at a few options here:

When you’re working with a crop overlay, it gives you a rule of thirds overlay to help you figure out what kind of crop you’ll want. When you move your crop around, you’ll find things that can work for you as long as you’re just a bit more open minded.

This image I didn’t end up cropping because I liked what it looked like out of the camera; but my absolute best images often involve crops.

In this photo, you can see the entire scene. Amanda is pretty centered and I’m not a big fan of how it looks right out of the camera. As I move the crop tool around I start to look for crops that I’d like. This one puts the rule of thirds intersections around her face.

When you give her more room, those intersections are more revolving around her.

Another interesting point that Capture One gives you is finding a way to divide the scene up into four even sections. This tells you exactly where the center is too and you see it being at her ear and right near her eye.

Here’s what the photo looked like originally

Here’s what I ended up doing.

Now here’s another in a more candid photojournalistic situation. This is how I wanted to crop the photo.

Here’s my crop, which I feel is stronger than the original.

Here’s the original. We feel further away from the subjects here.

Simple: effective. There’s no need for me to go more in depth there. Just try it.