Using the Crop & Straighten Tool in Lightroom 2
Selecting the Crop & Straighten Tool
The Crop & Straighten Tool is used for two main functions in Lightroom: Cropping a photo and straightening a photo. How creative!
Throughout this tutorial, I may refer to it interchangeably as the Crop Tool or the Straighten Tool depending on what task we’re using it for.
Locating the Crop & Straighten Tool
The tool is accessed from the Develop Module. Once in the Develop Module, choose the crop tool by clicking it near the top of the right panel.
Hint: The “R” key will immediately take you to the Develop Module and choose the Crop & Straighten Tool, no matter what Module you’re currently in. Learn that shortcut!
Using the Crop Tool
Once the Crop Tool is active, the easiest way to get a crop is to simply click and drag your desired crop on the image.
Click and drag your desired crop on the image.
You can adjust the crop by clicking and dragging the edges or corners of the crop when it’s active.
Click and drag an edge or corner to re-size the crop.
You can also click inside the crop and move the image around to place the crop where you want it. You’ll know you’re inside the crop when the cursor turns to a hand.
Click inside the crop and drag the image until you reach the desired crop.
When cropping, you may want to constrain the crop to a certain aspect ratio. In other words, maybe you’d like the crop to be square, the same width-to-height ratio as the original image, or the perfect crop to fit an 8×10 print. In the Crop Tool, you can set the aspect ratio and whether or not the crop is “locked” or constrained to that ratio. To set the crop ratio click in the drop-down menu in the Crop & Straighten Tool settings on the Right Module Panel. (Note: The Crop & Straighten Tool must be active to see those settings. If they’re not there, press the R key.)
Click the drop-down box to set the crop ratio.
You can choose Original (the same aspect ratio of the original image), one of the presets listed in the menu, or Enter Custom… to choose a custom aspect ratio. Remember that these are just ratios. They have no actual units (inches, centimeters, pixels, fathoms, leagues, cubits, etc.) until you export the image.
After you’ve selected a ratio, the small padlock icon in the Crop & Straighten Tool’s settings area changes from unlocked to locked. When you try to resize your crop now, you’ll find that it will always maintain the set aspect ratio, no matter how you try to resize it. To unlock the aspect ratio, simply click on the padlock icon.
Crop & Straighten Tool’s settings with the aspect ratio locked.
Crop & Straighten Tool’s settings with the aspect ratio unlocked.
Here are some important cropping shortcuts to learn:
- Enter Crop & Straighten Tool: R – This will take you into the Develop Module and select the Crop & Straighten Tool no matter where you are in Lightroom.
- Constrain Aspect Ratio: A – When the Crop & Straighten Tool is active, tapping the A key will lock and unlock the aspect ratio.
- Crop to Same Aspect Ratio: S – Hitting the S key while you’re in the Develop Module will bring up the Crop & Straighten Tool wit a crop set to the same aspect ratio as you last used.
- Reset Crop: Option-Command-R (Mac) or Alt-Control-R (PC) – Removes any crop or straighten settings on the selected image while in the Develop Module.
Straightening a Photo
The straighten tool is quite handy if you have a photo with a crooked horizon or vertical line or if you’d like to adjust the angle of the subject creatively.
As mentioned before, the straighten tool is part of the Crop & Straighten Tool, so a tap of the R key will bring you to this tool, no matter where you are in Lightroom.
The first way to straighten an image, is to move the slider labeled Angle in the Crop & Straighten Tool’s settings area. You can move the slider to + or – 45 degrees. Clicking in the box with the numbers will allow you to enter whatever value you choose (between -45 and +45 degrees).
Drag the Angle slider to straighten your photo.
If there’s a line in your photo that should be truly vertical or truly horizontal, you can use the Straighten Tool to designate a true horizontal or vertical in your image. Click the small carpenter’s level-looking icon next to the Angle slider to get the Straighten Tool.
Click the small carpenter’s level-looking icon next to the Angle slider to get the Straighten Tool.
Once you have the Straighten Tool, click and drag along a line in your photo that should be truly vertical or truly horizontal. When you release your mouse, Lightroom will straighten the image according to the line you’ve drawn and automatically apply a crop that keeps as much of the image as possible.
Click and drag along a line in your photo that should be truly horizontal or vertical.
As a shortcut, when the Crop & Straighten Tool is active, holding down the Command key on a Mac or Control key on a PC will give you the Straighten Tool and allow you to drag a straight line on your image. Also, once a crop has been drawn on your photo, hovering the mouse outside of the crop will give you a curved, double-sided arrow that lets you click and drag to rotate the crop.
Hovering the mouse outside of the crop will give you a curved, double-sided arrow that lets you click and drag to rotate the crop.
Guides
When in the Crop & Straighten Tool, you may see a grid or other type of guide overlaid inside the crop area. Lightroom offers a number of useful (and a few useless) cropping or straightening guides for your enjoyment. If you enter the Crop & Straighten Tool and don’t see any grids or guides on your image, go to the View menu and choose Tool Overlay -> Always Show. The keyboard shortcut for this is Shift-Command-H (Mac) or Shift-Control-H (PC).
To view the grids and guides, select View -> Tool Overlay -> Always Show.
Lightroom offers six different choices for the Crop Guide Overlay. Select the overlay you like from the View -> Crop Guide Overlay menu.
Lightroom offers a number of different choices for the crop guide overlay.
When the Crop & Straighten Tool is active, tap the O key to cycle through the six different Crop Guide Overlays. Two of the crop guides for which I have little use, the “Golden Ratio” and “Golden Spiral,” allow you to change their orientation using the Shift-O keyboard shortcut. The “Thirds” Crop Guide Overlay is my favorite.
Try a tall, skinny crop if you have an image that matches it.
Leaving the Crop & Straighten Tool
Once you’ve drawn your desired crop and/or angle, simply hit the Enter or Return key to accept your crop. Remember, all edits in Lightroom are metadata edits only and can, therefore, always be reversed. So, crop away!
If you’ve drawn a crop that you decide not to keep, the Escape key will take you out of the Crop & Straighten Tool without applying your latest changes.
Cropping Considerations
- You can only crop so much. – Your image is only made up of so many pixels. If you crop out a little chunk of your photo, don’t plan on trying to print a big 13×19 print out of it.
- Have your crop match your subject. – Horizontal subjects or a primary and secondary subject in a horizontal relationship typically look nice with a horizontal crop, and vice-versa. Rules were made to be broken, though, so have fun.
- Don’t be afraid to use a different crop. – Sometimes different can be good. We’re used to seeing long, narrow panoramics in the landscape orientation, but try a tall, skinny crop if you have a subject that matches it. Square crops are also quite appealing.
Filed Under: Enhancing (Basic) • Tools • Tutorials
About the Author: Scott Rouse is an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE), photographer, teacher, and graphic- and web-designer in Missoula, MT. His photography focuses on wildlife and adventure sports and can be viewed at 
Will someone explain how you can crop a horizontal photo into a vertical shape at custom proportions? For example, how do you crop a horizontal 35mm frame into a vertical 8×10 frame? Try it, LR doesn’t let you do it. At least, not in an obvious way.
Lawrence,
You’re right. It’s not easy…and a bit counter-intuitive.
Once you select the Crop Tool in Lightroom, choose 8×10 from the Aspect drop-down menu. Then grab a corner of the crop overlay with your mouse and begin to drag it smaller. If you drag the mouse in the direction you’d like to move the crop (like across the top of the image to make a vertical) the crop overlay will eventually “snap” to the vertical/portrait orientation.
You may have to drag around a bit to find the sweet spot to make that happen.
Thanks for your question!
Wow, so it does. You do have to fight it a little bit though. Thanks for pointing that out. Fantastic.
Yeah…it sure seems like there should be an easier way. Glad I could help.
Nicely done article.
Thanks, Kerry. And thanks for the Tweet, as well!
Hey, thanks Scott. I was getting pretty angry with lightroom over the portrait to landscape switch in the crop overlay tool. Couldn’t figure it out. Thanks again.
You’re welcome, Matt. Honestly, it took me a while to figure out the crop tool, as well!
-Scott
Hi Scott.
On the topic of the crop/straighten tool, can you tell me if it’s possible to zoom in while using the straighten tool? If I zoom in to better see a line I want to use for staightening, Lightroom kicks me back to full-frame view.
Thanks
Rod
Rod,
I guess I’d never tried before, but it does not look possible. I tried every trick I know to get it to zoom or keep the zoom while cropping, and it kicks me back out to the “Fit” view every time.
-Scott
Rod & Scott,
Lightroom does not have a built-in way to stay zoomed while in the crop tool. However, if you are running Windows 7, you can use the Windows Key plus the + or _ to zoom the window live. That will allow you a workaround while cropping.
If you don’t have Win7 but are still on the Window platform, you can download a program called Zoom-It. It’s free and the latest version has a “live” version like the Windows 7 built-in one. It’s not as nice but it will work in a pinch.
Best of luck,
- Wil
Thanks, Will. You can use Universal Access on the Mac to accomplish the same thing. (Check your System Preferences.)
The problem with this solution is that it doesn’t necessarily zoom the image in the same way the zoom function would in Lightroom. It’s more like holding a magnifying glass up to your screen.
But, it’s better than nothing, I guess!
-Scott
Is there a way to leave the angle tool active between photos? I am trying to straighten several photos in a row (different amounts) and each time I have to re-open the crop/straighten tool.
thanks.
steve
Steve,
There’s not a way, that I know of, to keep it active between images. You can tap the R key to get the crop tool on a photo, reach outside one of the corners with your mouse until it turns into a curved, double-sided arrow, and drag the photo around until it’s straight. It’s certainly not as cool as the “draw a line until it’s straight” tool, but you could then tap Enter, an arrow key to move to the next photo, and then R again to start the process all over.
Or…you could shoot with a tripod.
I’m just teasing…hope you’re not too sensitive. I admit..I hate tripods.
-Scott
Is it possible to custom the file size inside Lightroom? I have just joined a camera club and the file size has to be 1024×768 pixels to enter competitions?
Lynn.
Dear Lynn,
It certainly is possible to make a 1024×768 sized copy of your original file using Lightroom but the resizing does not happen in the crop tool. Lightroom’s crop tool hides pixels and changes an image’s aspect ratio. To make a new copy, whose physical dimensions are 1024×768 pixels, you need to use the Image Sizing option within the Export dialogue.
Lot’s of folks get confused by this one. The crop tool just tells Lightroom what pixels to show or to hide. Image Size tells Lightroom what physical dimensions to fill for the new file upon export.
Bonus advice: If I were you I would use the “Resize to fit: Width and Height” option in the Image Sizing section.
Hope this helps,
David
I can’t seem to make the Tool Overlay or Crop Guide Overlay active to use under View. I used to be able to use the third gride, but it’s no longer showing. Please help!
Joyce,
Check under the View menu and see what option is checked under the “Tool Overlay” option. It should say “Auto Show” or “Always Show.” If “Never Show” is checked, the crop overlay will…well…never show.
Hope that helps.
-Scott
How do you apply preset only for the region inside the cropped image?
Some presets apply graduated filter from different angle and position. When cropping, the filter position stay in the original image instead of reapplied inside the cropped area.
[...] first thing I do is properly align the image with the horizon, making it straight. Lightroom makes this super simple, but if you are in Photoshop and want to do it, I would recommend using guides. View the rulers [...]
Great article, now if you could explain how to:
1. Invert the crop tool’s mouse X and Y axis — it is completely retarded as it is. Dragging the mouse towards me should move DOWN, not UP.
2. Make “Original” (or just about any locked) aspect the default for every photo.
Igor,
Good questions.
1. It takes a bit of getting used to, but when you click and drag to “move the crop” you’re not actually moving the crop box around (as one does in Photoshop and many other image-editing programs). Rather you are moving the image behind the cropped area (which stays centered). So, clicking and dragging the mouse towards you does indeed move the image down, as intended.
2. When you lock the aspect ratio to Original by clicking the padlock icon in the Crop tool, that setting is maintained between images. For example, enter the Crop tool, click the padlock to lock to original aspect ratio, crop the image and hit Done. Now move to the next image and enter the crop tool. Your aspect ratio should still be locked to “Original.” You can’t lock the aspect ratio (from photo to photo) to anything other than original because that would automatically crop any photo you entered the Develop Module with. To sync a crop between images, try using the Sync button in the Develop module.
-Scott
Scott,
But I _want_ to move the crop rectangle, not the picture below!
It is counter-intuitive, that is why it takes “a bit of getting used to”.
Imagine that you are working with a rectangular frame and a scalpel, you would not be moving the photo around while keeping the frame in place, wouldn’t you?
It’s one of those examples where software architect tries to be “smarter” than the real life and fails. If at least there was an option to invert the mouse X and Y axis… even first person shooters allow you to set that according to your preference.
Thanks for the explanation on the second one though, for some reason the lock didn’t want to stay on between images.
Using LR3/XP64.
In LR3 the “X” key switches between landscape/portrait modes while cropping. RTFM.
Trying to crop a small portion of a 20MB image is very difficult in LR. LR is suppose to be oriented toward photographers, not graphics designers, so the Crop feature should behave like you are looking through a viewfinder. The crop frame should remain level and full size (or a user selected size) and the image should pan, zoom and tilt behind this frame. To keep both camps happy, there should be a toggle, like the “X” key.
Also, LR should borrow some ease-of-use from Google Earth so in BOTH crop modes, you can zoom with the mouse wheel and rotate by CTRL-mouse wheel, and do fine pan/zoom/rotate movements by simultaneously holding down the ALT key.