Cropping and straightening in Paint by Zaweba
The Crop tool (C) in Paint by Zaweba sets ratios or sizes, shows thirds and golden ratio overlays, straightens horizons and fills empty corners with Smart Fill.
A good crop can rescue an ordinary photo, and a crooked horizon can spoil a good one. The Crop tool in Paint by Zaweba, on the C key, handles both jobs, with composition overlays to help you decide where to cut and a way to fill corners left empty after straightening.
Ratios and sizes
You can crop freely, to a ratio, or to an exact width, height and resolution. A ratio is right when the shape matters: square for some social posts, wider ratios for headers and banners, the shape of a print frame. An exact W x H x resolution is right when the picture has to fit a known slot, such as a print size or a fixed web image.
Composition overlays
Overlays help you place the subject. The choices are thirds, grid, diagonal, triangle, golden ratio and golden spiral. Press O to cycle through them and Shift+O to turn the overlay, which matters for the diagonal, triangle and spiral, since they are not symmetrical.
Thirds is the everyday guide: put a horizon on one of the horizontal lines and a subject near where lines cross. The golden spiral suits pictures with a natural curve leading the eye towards a point. The grid helps check that verticals and horizontals are level. Use them as suggestions, not rules.
When you crop, you choose whether the cropped pixels are deleted or hidden. Deleting makes the file smaller and the crop final. Hiding keeps the pixels outside the frame, so you can change your mind later and reveal them again. Hide while you are still experimenting, or when the same picture may be needed in another shape.
Straightening
Draw a line along something that should be level, a horizon or a table edge, with Straighten, and the picture rotates to make that line level, cropping as it goes. Or let Auto straighten find the angle for you. Both are quicker and more accurate than rotating by eye.
Filling empty corners
Rotating a photo leaves empty triangles in the corners, and the usual answer is to crop tighter and lose some of the picture. The Crop tool can instead fill empty corners with Smart Fill, which creates matching content in the gaps. On skies, grass, walls and other simple areas it works very well. On detailed areas, check the fill closely.
Crop to Selection crops to whatever is selected. It is a quick route when you have already selected a subject and want a tight crop round it.
A cropping routine
Straighten first. Choose the shape the picture needs to be. Pick an overlay and move the crop until the subject sits well. Decide whether to delete or hide. If straightening left corners empty, fill them rather than cropping in further. Then look at the crop at fit-to-screen size before committing.
Common cropping errors
Cutting people at the joints, at the knees, wrists or ankles, which tends to look awkward; crop between joints instead. Cropping too tightly to the shape of a post and losing space for text. Deleting pixels on a picture you may need in another shape later. Forgetting that a ratio crop at an exact size may resample the picture, so check sharpness if you scaled up.
Perspective Crop, in the same tool group, flattens tilted rectangles such as documents. Trim removes plain borders automatically. Canvas Size adds space round the picture rather than taking it away. Together they cover the whole business of framing a picture in Paint by Zaweba.
