How to use the “Force Crop Frame”
The Force Crop Frame is a red rectangle with two triangular red handlers in the bottom left and top right corners. You won’t necessarily be able to see the red border of the rectangle, as it might be overlayed with the green Preservation Frame (which is always the case when an image is opened in the qCrop Client for the first time – Force Crop Frame and Preservation Frame enfold the entire image by default). The red handlers will always be visible, though.
The Force Crop Frame is used to cut away edges of the image in any case, independently of the target aspect ratio and other cropping hints. In practice, this frame is rarely applied, as professional photographs usually do not require trimming of the edges. But for those cases where we want to get rid of something on the edge – in every aspect ratio – the Force Crop Frame will do the job without the need to alter the master image.
Use the interactive qCrop Client in the box below to try this tutorial’s excercise:
Problem
This sample file shows a cup of tea on a white notebook near the right edge of the image. We do not want to show the cup and notebook ever.
Solution
Click/touch and hold the red triangular handler in the upper right of the master image. Move it to the left carefully, until the cup of tea and the notebook are outside the Force Crop Frame. Watch, how the cup and notebook vanish from all previews. When happy with the result, release the Force Crop Frame handler.
A good solution might look like this:
Expert Tips
- The red triangular Force Crop Frame handler in the lower left can be used just like the one in the upper right corner of the exercise.
- The green Preservation Frame and the yellow Vector Pointer must remain within the Force Crop Frame. The software will push them automatically if they get in the way during the Force Crop Frame handler movement. It is therefore necessary to re-evaluate the positions of the Preservation Frame and the Vector Pointer after each modification of the Force Crop Frame!
- For best efficiency, the Force Crop Frame should always be applied first (if required), before the application of other cropping hints, to avoid the readjustments mentioned in the paragraph above.