Cropping in Picasa

One of the reasons I like Picasa is that it makes a lot of commonplace tasks easy. I generally crop 90% of my photos. Why? Because when I have them printed, I want to control what gets clipped off the edges of my prints. I don't like leaving it to automated machinery which may or may not get it right.

To crop an image in Picasa, double click it to open the editing screen. At the top left are the basic editing tools and at the top of the list is Crop.


Clicking on Crop brings you to another screen - really the left margin has been replaced with the cropping controls. The basic sizes 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 are given and you also have the option of manually cropping - clipping the edges so that the final result is not a standard size.

Once you have chosen the size you want, click-hold-drag the mouse across the image to create a rectangle. Everything inside the rectangle is going to be kept; everything in dark gray is going to be lost. But...and it's a big but...Picasa will never willingly destroy your original photo. You can always restore the original photo and recrop it.


Click on the Preview button and you can see the immediate results of your cropping. After a few seconds you return to the cropping screen. If you like what you see click Apply. More likely, the cropping needs fine tuning. Put your mouse inside the light rectangle and you can drag it around to position it more accurately. Put your mouse on an edge and you can resize the rectangle - keeping the chosen proportions. In this example I've carefully clipped out the power lines at the top left.


When you are happy, click Apply and the image is cropped. Note though that you can click Recrop and start all over again if you want.