Image cropping question

Hi Folks,

Is there a way is in PhotoLab to crop to view? Say I select a zoom view of 25% and adjust the image to a composition position I like. Is there a way to crop to that view in PL quickly? The only way I can see to do it is zoom back out and remember the general view then use the cropping tool and try to get close to the view I was zoomed to.

Unfortunately :frowning:

Sorry, no - although, if you can turn on the crop tool without the zoom changing, you can simply draw the crop you want.

For what it’s worth: sometimes, I would like to view the image cropped a certain way before actually applying the change using the crop tool. However, it stays off my wish list, because the viewer never conforms to the crop I want. I prefer to simply use the crop tool and either rely on undo/redo to evaluate a change or, better still, make virtual copies and try different crops in each.

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Actually you can turn on the crop tool when zoomed in but the little zoom box has to be manipulated since the handles on the crop box can’t be accessed when in zoom unless the zoom box is moved to a side or to a corner then you have the do a series of moves that change the size of the crop box when the zoom box is moved…not the most ideal solution but it is doable. Its very time consuming and not really efficient at all. Oh well, maybe I’ll do a feature request but seeing as how that may not be a top priority for most folks I may just forego that for now.

Ok, I’ve devised a work around for applying a crop to my images when I need one quickly. I’ve saved a the crop as a preset and it works pretty well…I think. Now, I think I’ve read that crops can be stacked, can someone confirm this assumption?

I use 50% crops quite a bit so I have saved the crop as a preset and it can be drug around on the full sized image to work as a 50% zoom feature and then any other processing I need can be applied after the preset. The crop can be moved by clicking on the crop tool and dragging the crop to the desired location.

Good point :+1:t3:

I found a mistake in my most recent post it should have read Now, I think I have read that Presets can be stacked . Is this true can Presets be stacked?

YES for partial presets only :wink:
Pascal

…and you have to be careful with partial presets because currently there is no way in the UI to exclude local adjustments from a preset. So your Partial preset will remove local adjustments unless you fix it manually.

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I plan to apply the crop preset first then apply the local adjustments following application of the preset. I’ve yet to see a situation where a full preset works for every photo from a session so I don’t process my DNG files with full presets. Thanks for the info though. Possibly my idea will not work for my cropping workflow, I’ll just have to work with the idea a bit.

Larry

Thanks for that info, Pascal. Its much appreciated.

Larry

Local adjustments should come last as any partial preset will override them.

I wrote elsewhere in this forum how to tweak a preset file to exclude partial presets. It is not possible currently from within PL.

Just a small clarification, Christian: It’s not correct to say that “any partial preset will override.
them
” … it would have to be a partial preset that contained a Local Adjustment.

Regards, John M

As far as my tests go a partial preset without local adjustments contains „empty“ local adjustments and will remove local adjustments when it is applied.

It is easy to test: make a local adjustment and apply a partial preset that should have none.

Has this changed with PL2? Or is it an issue only on MacOS?

Including local adjustments in Presets would be an unfortunate workflow hiccup. It would be great if local adjustments were not part of presets at all. Perhaps local adjustments could be copies separately using the Edit menu or Image Menu:

  • Copy Local Adjustments
  • Paste Local Adjustments (when available, greyed out otherwise)

This post of Svetlana explains it a bit: Saving Preset without the Crop or Local Adjustements

If no local adjustment was ever applied to a picture the preset will have none. If local adjustment was applied and removed, the preset will have the „remove“ setting. Scroll down to see how to fix that manually.

So it is correct that not all presets will remove local adjustments. But the UI has no way to tell them apart or change this behavior.

Yes, that’s the clarification I was making.

Your warning is worthwhile noting, Christian - - I was being pedantic just in case another reader understood you to mean that any and ALL partial presets would remove local adjustments.

The simplest way to avoid the problem that you have found is to always base creation of a new partial preset on an image that does NOT contain local adjustments.

Regards, John M

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It really would be nice if there were a log of applied corrections and presets that accompany each image so that the corrections could be deleted without affecting other presets and corrections.

Good point, John, and good workaround. Still creating separate versions of images without Local Adjustments is a substantial interruption of workflow. Hence, feature request made: Allow Preset creation without Local Adjustments from finished images

Hi again, Alec - - FYI : This link doesn’t point to where I think you intended it to.

John