Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Chapter 10. Rotating, Cropping, and Resizing with Elements

After you move photos from your camera to your computer, you’re ready to spruce them up for public consumption. It’s time to straighten out crooked shots, trim off unwanted areas, and resize those photos for emailing or printing. If you’re an Elements owner, you possess much more power and control than with free programs like EasyShare and Picasa, described in the previous chapter, but, not surprisingly, it takes a little longer to find your way around the program.

Not to worry. This chapter starts out showing you how to manipulate Elements so you can get the best view of the photos you’re working with. Then you’ll learn how to rotate your shots into full, upright position, and realign photos—even scanned photos—that are slightly off-kilter. You’ll also learn how to reframe just the best part of your image and crop out the rest, and how to resize the entire photo, which usually changes its resolution, as well. This chapter clarifies all.

Note

Unless otherwise specified, the tools in this chapter work in the Elements Editor (Figure 10-1). If you’re in the Organizer, then press Ctrl+I to go to the Standard Edit window. See the note in Section 8.1.1 for a quick recap of the difference between the Editor and the Organizer.

Changing Your View of Your Photos

Sometimes, rather than changing the size of your photo, all you want to do is change its appearance in Elements so you can get a better look at it. For example, you may want to ...