Cropping, Rotating, and Sharpening
Moving and reshaping your image is part of the standard darkroom toolbox. Slight changes in framing, for example, can make a photograph much stronger. If you shoot at the highest resolution with a digital camera, you will have plenty of room to crop.
If only part of your photograph works or if some parts are distracting, then cropping or cutting out a section of the image might improve it considerably. In a sense you are cutting out a frame within the frame that you have already created. If you shot the picture originally with a high resolution, then cropping should not affect its quality, even though you will be reducing the size (and pixel count) of the image.
In this computer edited photo, the image was cropped to remove the foreground.
You can rotate your picture 90 degrees to see how it might look in a vertical format. You can also combine this with some cropping to make the vertical orientation fit with your new format. Many pictures look better as verticals. Some subjects lend themselves to vertical orientation; others look better when taken in the horizontal format. In general, people and buildings tend to look better vertically. Landscapes and groups of people work well within the horizontal format. When buying a photo file manager and browser, get one that will perform a lossless vertical rotation. There is no reason that you should lose detail because you merely have to rotate an image to its true orientation.
Because landscapes are often shot in horizontal format, such orientation is sometimes referred to as “landscape.” And because portraits are often shot in vertical format, such orientation is sometimes referred to as “portrait.” When you shoot a bunch of pictures in the portrait orientation, go through your photos quickly after downloading and turn them so they display properly.
If you want to have a person look to the left instead of to the right, simply flip the image. With film photography it was often called flopping, as the negative was flopped to reverse the image. Flipping only works if there is no writing in the picture, since the writing will be reversed.
The sharpening tool allows you to make your image a bit crisper, but it can also add a grainy look to your image. Use the sharpening tool when needed, but don't overuse it.
