Cropping

[David Threlfall]

I am new to Affinity.  I am trying to size pictures in inches.  In Photoshop I select the crop tool and insert the dimensions I want to crop to ie. 15" x 10", then I just drag to the selected size.  I don't seem to be able to do this with Affinity.  Can someone run me through stage by stage how I can choose my own crop size.  I have been into the tool bar at the top and selected Canvas size and entered inches then the size I want.  But it leaves me short of the actual size.

David

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @David Threlfall.

Photoshop and Affinity Photo work differently.

Are you trying to:

1. Crop an existing photo to change its image content?
   or
2. Resize an existing photo keeping its existing content (to the extent possible)?
   or
3. Some combination of cropping and then resizing the cropped content to a new size?

The operations are separate in Affinity Photo (until the 1.7 beta), and you would need to crop to get the image content you want, and then resize the document to get the document size you want. (And, possibly, rasterize the document after the crop and before the resizing.)

The cropping works differently in the 1.7 beta, but I'm still experimenting with the new capabilities there.
 

[David Threlfall]

Thank you Walt. I am trying to resize existing photo from when it was uploaded from SD card.  The size is too big so I want to custom size it to say a 7" x 5" or a 15" x 10".  How do I go about this, step by step.

 

David

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, David Threlfall said:

Thank you Walt. I am trying to resize existing photo from when it was uploaded from SD card.  The size is too big so I want to custom size it to say a 7" x 5" or a 15" x 10".  How do I go about this, step by step.

"Too big" is still ambiguous.

A photo's actual size is determined by its pixel dimensions. E.g., 6010 x 4005 px.

Additionally a photo may have a DPI or PPI recorded, which is a larger and more confusing topic, but if you have a 6010 x 4005 px image and you were to consider it as having a DPI of 300 then if you were to print it it would have a print size of approximately 20.03 inches by 13.35 inches. Or, if you were going to print using a DPI of 150 the image would print at 40 inches by 26 inches, approximately.

I do not know the pixel dimensions of your camera images, nor the DPI the camera may have recorded, nor the uses you're planning for the images.

I can say that if you're thinking of 15x10 or 7x5 inches, those two sizes are not compatible. That is, they are not the same aspect ratio. 15x10 is 1.5:1, and 7x5 is 1.4:1, which means that you cannot print the same image at both sizes, exactly.

To print a 15x10 image (and keep all of it) but smaller (approximately 7x5) you'd actually have to print it as 7.5 x 5 inches, or you would have to print it as a 7 x 4.666... inch image on 7x5 paper.

Or, if you want an exactly 15x10 image and an exactly 7x5 image, when transforming the 15x10 image you will need to both crop it (removing part of the image) and resize it.

So, I can't give you any step by step directions, as there are still questions to be answered.

Starting with, what do you mean by "too big".  And how will you use the image.

Sometimes you need to share with a friend, and you need to email, and it simply has too many pixels.

Sometimes you want to upload to a website, and that may have restrictions on the total number of pixels or on pixel dimensions.

Sometimes you want to print, and sometimes you want to print on a specific paper size with specific borders (or no borders).

All of these may require different processing, and different combinations of Cropping and/or Document Resizing, or they may simply involve Exporting or Printing with appropriate settings.

[Old Bruce]

I think from what you have said you don't want to crop the image so much as resize it. What you do first is choose the "Custom Ratio" for the crop (e.g. 5 x 7 units) and cut out that what you don't want then resize (if necessary, the print driver may do a better and quicker job)  that image so it will print at 5x7 inches.