Cropping pictures in PSP as if I was using scissors

[rfe777]

Hello everyone

I was wondering if there is an option in Paint Shop Pro to crop pictures not in the usual rectangle shape but like using scissors, like someone that cuts a drawing he did on a sheet of paper with scissors, which means to crop in any shape that I want.

Anybody knows?

TIA

[LeviFiction]

There are three crop tools. Geometric crop tool, the rectangle, that can do tens of different geometric shapes including ellipses, rounded rectangles, stars, and so on and so forth.

The lasso or Freehand selection tool - this has the option of a click and drag (like drawing in the selection) or a point - to - point where you click and it draws a straight line between the first point and the second point. And it also has options for attempting to do an automatic edge detection for cutting around elements in an image.

Finally there's the magic wand tool for making selections based on similar pixel values and match modes.

If you'd like here are three tutorials one for each selection mode

Selection Tool

Freehand Selection Tool

Magic Wand Selection Tool

[rfe777]

Sorry for my long absence, life issues.

OK, so now I used the lasso to select the area in a picture that I want, but how do I crop it?

[Ron P.]

Go to the Image menu, and choose Crop to Selection. or simply press Shift + R on your keyboard.

Edited,, corrected the shortcut

[LeviFiction]

I thought it was Shift + R because Ctrl + R rotates it. Maybe they changed that up a little at some point I don't know.


Wow, it seems I completely screwed up when writing my first reply. I called them crop tools, but they are in fact selection tools. I do apologize for that. However, I must admit I'm a bit perplexed by your use of the term "crop."

In PSP typically a crop refers to removing rectangular portions of an image to remove areas that are distracting. Also to change the aspect ratio of an image without stretching it at all. So the crop tool is always rectangular. Selection tools allow you to specify geometric, color based, or drawn areas of an image and manipulate only those selected regions. Now "crop" can also mean to lop something off. In which case Ron's suggestion is very good as it does both.

The "Crop to Selection" option will both crop the image into a bounding box around the selection decreasing the overall size of the image so that the selected area fits perfectly within the new image size. It then also proceeds to delete the areas around the selection. So you're left with a smaller image and only the actual portion of the image that you had selected.

Now, this becomes important, if you are working on a "Background" layer then the unselected portions of your image will be filled in with the background color you have set in your materials palette. If, however, you're working on a regular raster layer then those unselected areas will become transparent.

If you wanted to keep the original image size and just delete the unselected portions of the image, however, then that's something different. To do that you need to first invert the selection so that the areas that were previously unselected become selected and those that were selected become unselected. We do this because when a selection is on the image, you can only edit the areas inside that selection. So to remove the areas outside of your selection you need to invert it so that the outside is the area you're working on.

So make your selection then select from the menu "Selections->Invert" or just use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + I. Then you can select from the Edit menu "Edit -> Clear" or just hit the Delete key and it'll erase the newly selected area. You can then deselect everything or invert the selection again to reselect your previously selected area.

I hope this helps to explain the options a bit more.