CROPPING
Cropping is a technique for focusing the eye upon
any particular image by means of reduction. The
term is commonly used to describe the removal of
extraneous visual data (such as unnecessary back-
ground or individuals) from photographs or other
kinds of images. Often cropping eliminates partial
and extra images not germane to the composition,
visuals that cannot be fully read or contextually
understood (i.e., any out-of-frame, blurry, or
rogue image).
Cropping can be as simple as rounding- or
squaring-off corners, or can require cutting and
shaping images into other forms. In journalism
cropping is one technique of ‘‘layout and design’’
involving, as in traditional newspaper layout, the
carefully measured addition of strips of black line
delineated by width. The layout technician creates
columns, boxes, large and small headers, or simply
white space, usually in order to market page space,
demarcate advertisements, and draw readers’ att-
ention to image or text.
Cropping is also a technique used for building
and maintaining scrapbooks, or ‘‘scrapbooking,’’
where photos often assume the fanciful shapes of
circles, stars, and hearts, or project-specific shapes
such as teddy-bears for a baby album, and horse
shapes for an equestrienne’s album. Aiding in the
shaping process, templates include squares, rec-
tangles, circles, triangles, hearts, stars, bells, dolls,
and animals. Paper piercing patterns, stamps,
mattes, and scraps may add information or pro-
vide pure decoration by coordinating colours that
help to ‘‘bring out’’ or emphasise an element for
aesthetic effect. Scrapbookers select photos, deter-
mine what constitutes suitable background, what
is unimportant and how best to display the
desired image by cutting. Background is impor-
tant as it may provide useful contextual informa-
tion, particularly if creating an album as an
historical record.
Traditionally, cropping was achieved by means
of scalpel, Exacto-blade, razor blade, paper-trim-
mer,guillotine, scissors, paper trimmer, box cutter,
punch, or some other sharp cutting tool. Nowa-
days, cropping is accomplished virtually prior to
its concrete appearance on paper. Many of these
tools are still used professionally in print journal-
ism and advertising. Nowadays cropping is as
likely to be thought of as the virtual correction
or alteration to an image prior to its concrete or
material appearance; computer software programs
perform this kind of operation. Thus page-crop-
ping abilities are to be found in Adobe Acrobat,
Adobe Photoshop, PageMaker, and other soft-
ware publishing programs. Many scanners
(machines dedicated to ‘‘reading’’ texts as images
or symbols, and transporting them onto compu-
ters as binary data) have built-in capabilities of
automatic image-cropping.
One of the newer associations with cropping
occurs in online editing. Microsoft Picture IQ(tm),
a product of software giant Microsoft, allows
fades, morphs, texturizing, artistic auto-rendering,
and 3D, in addition to the removal of red-eye glare
from flashbulbs, scratches, wrinkles, and other
unwanted marks on the image. Picture IQ(tm)
PhotoTools(tm)Version 2.0, a set of online photo
editing and enhancement tools, is a product of
global digital imaging network company Photo-
Channel Networks Inc. PhotoTools(tm)integrates
online advances with cropping controls as well as
the standard controls for brightness, contrast, and
the omnipresent ‘‘clip art’’ catalogue for illustrat-
ing straight text. In addition to permitting crop-
ping changes to the image online (without the
interim step of adjusting composition with another
software platform), this program enables users to
‘‘undo,’’ removing changes made. (For instance,
when using the justifiably popular Adobe Photo-
shop to combine images one might enable the
program by clipping a TIFF image before import-
ing it into QuarkXPress.) This adds a degree of
flexibility not found in all photo composer
packages. According to the industry’s news release
(Seattle Times, 7 Feb. 2001), PhotoIQ features
include user controlled ‘‘freeform’’ cropping, one
click cropping to industry-standard print-aspect
ratios, red-eye removal, online clipart, customized
user interface skins, and addition of photo card
templates, borders, and clipart. Most photo-
graphic platforms now offer ‘‘one-click’’ cropping,
making images even more ephemeral. Other meth-
ods for image cropping are found in digital imag-
ing map programs.CROPPING