12
Tip – A Bunch of Crop Tool Tips
It’s Friday and I’m heading up north to shoot my sister-in-law’s wedding. Wish me luck 
Anyway, I figured I’d close out the week with a few crop tool tips.
• Press R to get to the Crop Tool. It works even if you’re in the Library module.
• Once you’re in Crop mode press the letter O (for Overlay) to change the overlays that you see on your photo. They’ll toggle between the rule of thirds, a grid, and several other overlays that you’ll never use 
• Press A to toggle between constraining/not constraining to the aspect ratio
• Press Cmd-Shift-R (PC: Ctrl-Shift-R) to reset your crop all together.
• If you’ve changed the Aspect Ratio on a previous photo then press the letter S to set that same aspect ratio for the next photo.
• And finally, a really cool way to crop is to go into Crop mode. Then press the letter L twice to go into Lights Out mode. Now you have your photo in crop mode with none of the clutter of the interface. Press L again to get out of Lights Out mode.
Happy cropping and have a great weekend.
22 Comments to “Tip – A Bunch of Crop Tool Tips”
Leave a comment
Lightroom Killer Tips
Get your weekly dose of the coolest Adobe® Lightroom® tutorials, tips, time-saving shortcuts, photographic inspiration, and undocumented tricks with Matt Kloskowski from Kelby TV. New videos posted each week and other news over the week. Find out more about Matt at his portfolio site.Categories
Kelby Media Sites
And O to cycle through the different crop lines.
Matt:
Wouldn’t this be better suited as “A Crop of Crop Tool Tips”????
Get it – farm humor? Maybe not.
Kevin T.
And we could take it one step further,
make it a Horsing around with the crop tool tip..lol
Scott Kelby jokes
Holy crop…didn’t know the CMD-SHIFT-R one…Cheers
Have a great shoot Matt, oh and remember ‘back up’!!!
All the best,
Glyn
Beware … Ctrl-Shift-R is not a “Reset Crop” combination, but rather “Reset All Settings”, i.e. it will also reset all sliders and everything else you have changed.
Another quick one to add is the Shift-O (PC) key combination when the overlay is active to rotate the orientation of the crop overlays…
Cheers!
Thanks for the shortcuts.
I’m lucky to have two displays so when I crop I bring up the image on the second display and can view my crop in real time as I adjust it, leaving the interface controls visible to me on the first display.
Great tips!
Thanks, I didn’t know that Lights Out Mode worked in the crop tool!
One additional shortcut from me. Hold Ctrl (I guess Cmd on MAC) and drag a line along the horizon to straighten your image.
What I want to know is: Is there anyway to turn the overlays off entirely when in crop mode?
Best regards,
Adam
@mcananeya
If you go to the View | Tool Overlay area you can set it to Never Show
@DJ – thanks, I have need to do this a lot and the tip is much appreciated. (CTRL and drag line to set angle of crop.)
Thanks, Iyle!
Thanks for the tips, Lyle. I can’t tell you how much swearing I was doing this week dealing with just this subject and in a few short words you solved it. Well done.
Cool tips. Thanks Lyle
“What I want to know is: Is there anyway to turn the overlays off entirely when in crop mode?”
Try toggling the “H” key to hide/show.
I’d love to see some of the wedding photos!
Thanks Cindy – the “H” key in crop mode is a nice hide/show toggle for the overlays, I didn’t know that one – a lot more flexible than what I suggested.
Matt,
I love the A short cut and the S short cut. I am sure I will use those a lot.
Hey Matt,
BTW, afer LTR killer tips your iTunes podcast includes links without files.
Could you please fix them?
Thanks,
Timur
It’s command-option-R to reset the crop. (As others have pointed out, shift-command-R will reset everything, not just the crop.)
DJ: didn’t know the ctrl-drag shortcut. Thanks!
Hi Matt!
First of all, thank you for this great site. it helped me out a lot !
I have a challenge for you
I have a nice big photo which I want to print on a 3-part canvas so that, when put next to each other, the 3 parts form the original image.
I have to print 3 photos, 36×46 cm each, taking into account that 3 cm of each side of the print will be wrapped around the frame, so it wont be visible. The result would be three framed photos 30×40 cm each. I don’t know how can i use the crop tool to export 3 images from the original one, so in the end, after wrapping the photo on the frame, the remaining visible parts match perfectly.
Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks,
Florin