Using PhotoPlus 6 to Edit Your Photographs

How to crop a photograph

Cropping photos is useful for trimming unwanted material from one or more edges of the image. For example, you may have a picture of yourself posing with your ex-girlfriend, and you wish to remove her from the photograph. Or you may desire to trim some of the background to put more emphasis on you. Follow this procedure to crop a photo using PhotoPlus 6:

1. Select the crop tool from the Tools toolbar.

2. Click and drag using your left mouse button to select the area that you wish to save. ("Click and drag" means this: put your mouse cursor at the top left corner of the area you wish to save. Click the left mouse button and hold it down as you drag the selection box to the bottom right of the desired image area, then release the left mouse button.)

3. Double-click anywhere in the rectangle to crop your photo. If you make a mistake, select EDIT, then UNDO CROP.

How to resize a photograph

Click IMAGE, then IMAGE SIZE. A box pops up that shows the current width and height of the image in pixels. In the Pixel Size box, type in the desired width of your image (typically 200 to 640 pixels, but preferably 400 pixels or less). If the Maintain aspect ratio checkbox is checked (it is by default), when you type in a new value for the width, the height will automatically change as it should, so you do not need to enter a new value for the height. If your image is small, do not stretch it by increasing its width or height. That will make the image larger but more grainy and less attractive. Toward the bottom of the Image Size box, there is a slider for the resampling method, which is set by default to bilinear interpolation. Leave it there. Ignore the Print Size box. Now click OK.

How to save a photograph

Click FILE, then EXPORT OPTIMIZER. The default format is JPG; leave it there. A Quality slider allows you to set the image compression ratio. In general, JPEG settings of 25 to 75% give reasonable picture quality while minimizing the file size. (Tip: With JPEG images, higher % settings give better image quality but have larger file sizes — thus increasing the download time for people viewing your images. Some of them may have slow dial-up modems, so choosing the best JPEG picture quality is not advisable.) Now click the EXPORT button. Choose a file name with lower-case letters (and numbers, if desired), but do not include any spaces or special characters. Now click SAVE.