I know all this might seem a bit off the beaten path when it comes to learning how to crop, but the moral of the story is that you should, of course, do whatever you can to get your pictures composed in camera. Of course, there are always exceptions to this, and some sites might want your pictures to be larger than 2048 pixels, but if you’re posting them on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or other popular sites that size is more than big enough. This means that of the pixels available to you from a 20-megapixel camera, you could trim away 16 million of them (almost 80 percent!) and still get a sharp picture for sharing online. A good rule of thumb for that is to keep the maximum dimension, either width or height, to no more than 2048 pixels. There’s also the issue of posting and sharing your pictures online. Suffice it to say, unless you are turning your pictures into wall-sized posters there is clearly a lot of room within those megapixels to crop to your heart’s content. A 200 dpi print at that size contains about 1 million pixels or five percent of what the 20-megapixel camera has to offer. This means you could take an uncropped image from a 20-megapixel camera and print a pristine picture 27 inches wide! If you’re making standard 4×6″ prints it’s even better. If you’re going to print your photos it’s a good idea to have them be at least 200 dpi or dots per inch.

Mobile phones are usually about 12, and some ultra-expensive DSLRs are 36, but I’m going to use 20 megapixels as a nice round baseline here. Most modern digital cameras have anywhere from 16-24 megapixels. The math of cropping and why it’s okay to do itīefore getting too deep into the art of cropping it’s important to know what your goals are for your photography and look at the math behind those megapixels. Sometimes all it takes to give your pictures the added punch you’re looking for is a few clicks of the humble crop tool. Things like exposure, contrast, color saturation, black-and-white conversion, and even adding and removing elements can all be done with the magic of Lightroom and Photoshop.īut there is another tool available in every image editor that can have a powerful impact on your images and is quite easy to use as well. While there is certainly something to be said for getting your photos just right in camera, one of the wonders of modern digital photography is that you have a myriad of tools at your disposal if you want to fix things later on as well. It’s a fantastic rule of thumb for carpentry but thankfully when it comes to photography you have a bit more leeway.

There’s an adage I learned over a decade ago when I did construction work in the summer that I still try to live by measure twice, cut once. In this article, we’ll look at some tips for cropping your images into better compositions.

Crop foto 4x6