Zoom and Crop?

[ClaudioG]

Hey all, I know this might be a schoolboy question but I have to ask.. If I take an image of let's say a bird and I feel it doesn't quite seem as close as I originally thought.. Could I in PP, zoom in a little and crop..or is this not recommended at all?

[Stagecoach]

Claudio,

Yes you can zoom in and crop in PP, but each time that you do this you are losing pixels. It's a balance and is dependent upon the percentage of 'zooming' in, number of original pixels and final quality required or acceptable.

[Manfred M]

Of course you can, with the limitations of what Grahame has stated. Sometimes you are limited by your equipment and the composition simply needs the crop to work. Which image works better here?





or....






I was already shooting at the 500mm setting of the lens and could not get any closer.

[ClaudioG]

I see what u mean..as long as the quality is still acceptable , it seems alright to zoom in, even to change compostion..thank you Manfred. Thanks Graham

[davidedric]

If you are shooting wildlife (and you are in one of the best countries in the world for that!), be sure you will be cropping - you usually won't be able to get an ideal perspective.

Plus, wildlife tends to move around a bit, so even if you can fill the frame from where you are, it is sometimes better to zoom out a little to take care of any movements and make sure you don't cut off any vital bits.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Claudio,

As the others have said, cropping is inevitable

But how much is acceptable?
Well, I currently shoot with 12MP or 16MP cameras, so the full size images are either 4288 x 2848 or 4608 x 3456.

I prefer not to crop either to less than 2000px tall (as a rule), as after all PP, this allows me to downsize 2:1, to 1000px, which gives me a reduction of noise and better sharpening can be applied.

If the subject matter really, really warrants it, I might crop to the final size of 1000px tall, but this will potentially leave me with more noise issues (but that's only a few clicks to fix with Neat Image) and the sharpness won't be very good.

Of course, if I can crop less, or not at all; whey-hey

UPDATE: one more thought, I crop less on my jpg only P510 compared to RAW captures from the DSLR or S100.

Hope that's helpful,

[ClaudioG]

Thank you guys...your advice is always appreciated!!

[Mike Buckley]

One other thought has to do with prints: The more you crop the image, the more you are limited regarding the size of the print that can be satisfactorily made.

[Colin Southern]

One other thought has to do with prints: The more you crop the image, the more you are limited regarding the size of the print that can be satisfactorily made.

I hear this a LOT. I also note that many people seem to get a bit "confused" by it; eg. many will say that a print "needs" to be 300 ppi etc. What I like to say to people these days (in response to the [related] "how big can I print an image of xxxx by yyyy pixel dimensions") is "you can print it as big as you like" - the variable isn't so much quality as it is viewing distance (ie "for an image of xxxx by yyyy pixel dimensions, how close would I be able to get before the degradation becomes obvious).

A real-world example ... I was asked to print & frame a canvas (22 x 15") - and the source file was VGA quality (640 x 480 pixels) - and to make matters worse, we had to discard about 1/2 of the 640! So in the end we had around 320 x 480 to play with (or around 21 PPI (a "little" short of the 180 I normally work to - and a "little more" short of the 300+ ppi recommended by many). (at this point you might be asking 'why bother", but it was the last photo of a chap who died the next day -- so that's all we had to work with).

How did it look? Well any closer than about 5 feet away and the degradation was pretty obvious - but from 6 feet or more away it didn't look as bad as I thought it would. And from across the room it looked just fine.

[Mike Buckley]

All of your responses to my post are correct, of course, Collin, as is my post. Nothing about our two posts is mutually exclusive.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Claudio,

Just keep in mind that most "post card" size images you see on the internet have already discarded around about 95% of the original captured information - so don't be afraid to atleast try an aggressive crop - especially if the image is only going to be shown online.

Here's an example ... first up, a cheeky little grab-shot that I like ...



And the original image it was cropped from ...

[Colin Southern]

All of your responses to my post are correct, of course, Collin, as is my post. Nothing about our two posts is mutually exclusive.

Hi Mikke,

For sure. Wasn't disagreeing with you, just thought your post gave a good lead-in opportunity for what I felt was an important perspective with regards to print sizes.