Cropping tips thread

Hoping this is ok, thought it might be helpful to have a thread for beginners to post pics, [ preferably the original exactly as it was taken ], for the more experienced to crop / tweak as though the croppers/tweakers had taken the shot themselves so we can learn from the results

How would you crop this shot and do any other tweaks to make it look nice please ?
( Please explain what you did in terms of tweaks for light/colour/depth etc )

Nice idea Patch. And nice shot too

I haven't reinstalled photoshop yet so will have a go later in the week (waiting for some PC equip to arrive!).

Patch, this was a lot of fun. Great idea! First, this is a nice photograph. There's lots of possibilities there. I started with a landscape crop that put the main blossom in the upper right third of the frame, being careful to include enough area around the flower to allow for editing and a simple frame.

After the crop the first thing I did is run through the Auto Enhance, Auto Levels & Auto Contrast adjustments in Elements 7.0. My goal was to use the contrast between the white petals and the blue sky to add "pop" to the photograph. Next I ran the cropped photo through a plug-in filter called Noiseware. It eliminated every pixel of noise so that I could then enlarge and sharpen the final image. The original, uncropped image resolution was 1023 x 680. My adjustment took the cropped version to 3501 x 2655. I used Genuine Fractals 6.0 Professional to accomplish this without any loss of sharpness or detail.

Next I wanted the blossom to stand out as the main theme of the photograph, so, using my rectangular marquee I marked off a rectangular shape about half an inch from the outside edge, then feathered that selection 100 pixels and inverted the whole selection. I then made a levels adjustment with the bottom right output slider moving it toward the center just under half an inch. This effectively vignetted the blossom very subtly.

I merged everything together, completed an Auto Sharpen, then did an Adjust Sharpness edit from the Enhance menu with a setting of 200. Finally selected the entire composition and framed it three times with Black, White, then Black again. This locks in the composition and adds interest at the main subject, the blossom.

I hope I didn't lose anyone by this exact description of what I did and why I did it. The whole process took me 5 to 10 minutes as I am experienced at using all these software packages. I hope you enjoy the results and comment please.

Again, thank you Patch for getting the creative juices going. What a fun challenge!

Nice one Bob

First Patch that is a nice shot, when you looked at what you had taken what did you say to yourself. Well, I will guess, wish I had gone in closer. OK try that and see what you think.

Blossom look like a cherry on a cake, must remember the rule of thirds unless you have good reason to break it. So change the crop to place the in focus main point of the shot where it looks best. Have another look to see what you think, a deep look.

Do you think it would look best with the main subject where it is or somewhere else, should there be more space round the main subject or less, make the decision and when you are happy finish with a suitable frame, if you like frames, a tweak of the focus or the colour and then leave it for at least 24 hours. Take another look and adjust if needed.

Most important thing with any edit or adjustment is not to forget about the 'history button' you can always go back and undo if you don't like and always keep a copy of the original in RAW or in Tiff.

Will not do an example as I like Bobs but it may well have looked as good in a square crop with, in this case, the subject in the centre.

Bob what a terrific step by step guide for what you did
I`m going to print it out so I can try as near as possible with my own software, mine is`nt as powerful as yours and I only have the freebie Noiseware download at the moment but you have given me something really good there to try to emulate thank you

That has to be one of the most valuable pieces of advice ever, certainly for me anyway, I often tend to be a bit too enthusiastic and post something then when I next open the files the pics are in some time later I do usually find something I could have done differently/better so now I will make a point of waiting then looking again

Yep, I always keep an original copy having in the past done edits on a one and only copy, when I look back at the one`s I`ve done that with and consider how much better software is these days and how much it will no doubt keep improving I know I could have done much better tweaks now if only I had kept a copy, one of those live and learn lessons in my case

My first thought was a square central crop but the more I looked at the photo the more possibilities I could see until I got to where I know I would have completely overdone it

Now that I`ve seen Bob`s version I can look at the pic with a fresh eye, I really like the perspective Bob has used so that`s something I will experiment with, [ I took a stack more blossom photos today which I`m getting ready to go through ]