Crop Guide Harmonies

When selecting a compositional guide for classical photographic framing many people agonize over the many choices presented in their editing software. It is no secret that I rely upon and espouse the “Lightroom” way of cropping. Lightroom alone offers 7 different guides and some guides have 8 variations. Recently it struck me, though it had long dwelt on the periphery of my thoughts, how similar the placement of the key ‘power point’ is in many different compositional guides.

Here is the same image captured in the standard DSLR aspect ratio of 3:2 with four of Lightroom’s compositional overlays activated. I chose the four overlays that best place a subject and ignored those overlays designed for alignment, leading lines and paper size. From top to bottom are Triangles, the Fibonacci Spiral, the Golden Ratio, and the Rule of Thirds.  Traditional compositional theory has held that when you place a subject in frame using these guides that you will have a more pleasing and powerful composition – generally speaking.  The intersection of the guides is called a power point. Notice how close all these power points are?

In fact, to illustrate this, I put each of these screen captures into a separate Photoshop Layer with the blend mode set to Lighten and put a red dot on each power point. Pretty interesting, isn’t it.  Makes that sweet spot look just a little bit bigger.

Following rules and sticking to guides is great, but realize that there are many rules, some of which are discordant with one another as well as those which harmonize.  In terms of strong image placement in a standard DSLR aspect ratio output, Rule of thirds really nails the middle of the range but other placement strategies harmonize close enough for Rock-n-Roll.

Remember that there are many other factors to consider in composition and that blithely placing subjects on the guides and calling it composed without consideration to rules of space, odds, motion and other sensibilities specific to your image’s content is dangerous to the final harmony of your image.

Rikk Flohr © 2014

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Lightroom™ Compositional Guides: Triangles

A look at one of the more obscure compositional guides in the Lightroom Crop Tool.

The picture show above is a cropped version of larger capture. It was composed after capture in-software, specifically, Lightroom 5.0. Lightroom offers a wealth of compositional guides within its crop tool. More Here.Some of them are quite well known. A Rule of Thirds guide is default in Lightroom. Also commonly used are the Golden Ratio and Golden Spiral. There is an straight grid, useful for architectural shots and a print size overlay for visualizing your image on various stock paper sizes.  There are also a couple of of less well-known compositional guides.

This Compositional Guide is called, quite simply, ‘Triangles’. The premise of this compositional guide is to run a diagonal from opposite corners along the long axis of the image. Perpendiculars are run from the diagonal bisector to the remaining corners, creating four smaller triangles and two larger triangles if you combine them. When I have a subject with a long-thin profile, the triangles dialog can be a great place to start.  This 12-spotted Skimmer is just such a subject.

There are several competing limitations which drive the in-camera framing on this shot.  First and foremost is a skittish subject. I can only get so close. The second is a tough mid-day sun which forced me into using a ring flash to illuminate the underside of the dragonfly. Well, the Canon MR-14EX Ring Flash only fits on my 100MM F2.8 Macro so I am focal length-challenged from the start. I knew going in I was bound to be cropping to fill the frame with my subject.

One of the things I do when I know in-camera composition is out the window, is to go to Center-point focusing.  It eliminates a lot of focus issues when shooting wildlife but it does necessitate the holding of your subject dead-center of the image. Composition is unfortunately left for software but the percentage of in-focus shots increases dramatically.

One of the other issues is the presence of the rebar upon which the dragonfly is seated. It needs to be subdued somehow. Taking it slightly off the vertical by using a little Crop Rotation, is just the way to lessen its prominence.

We focus on eyes. It is our nature. The rotation of the crop was designed to fill the frame and place the important parts of the dragonfly along  strong angles in the photograph. I decided to make the diagonal just touch the tail and bottom of the thorax as if the insect were resting on the guide. The remainder of the cropping was left to hold the area of the lowest wing and the highest eye at the intersections with the perpendiculars. Care was taken to allow a little space on the far side of the rebar lest we create a visually distracting sliver. All of this served to slightly lean the rebar into the frame. The reset of the work is done with dodging and burning to get that rebar under control and beneath the dragonfly in visual priority.

With the guides removed in the final version, you can see the final effect of our labors. We’ve filled the frame, created a strong diagonal and a pair of leading lines to take us into the eye of the dragon… fly, all while composing competing elements into a visually satisfying image.

If the diagonal runs the wrong way in your image, try the key combination of [Shift][O] to toggle the overlay between its two versions.

When you have a diagonal subject, consider using the Triangles Compositional overlay to aid your crop.

Rikk Flohr © 2013

The Golden Rectangle

1.618 : 1

The Golden Rectangle has been written about many times before. I have included a link to the Wikipedia article in the previous sentence. Rather than rehash what it is and the little hidden squares and rectangles, I will leave that to those of you curious enough to read the Wikipedia article.

I find it interesting that none of the standard paper sizes emulate this ratio precisely, given that so many ‘artists and architects’ consider the ratio aesthetically pleasing. Equally surprising, to me at least, is the notion that standard cropping software (in my personal case, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom™) doesn’t offer a golden rectangle as a standard cropping aspect ratio. There is a series of Golden Ratio compositional guides within Lightroom – activated by pressing the [ O ] key (when cropping).  So today, I am going to play ratio against guides and Midas it up a bit.

As I wrote in the previous article. I like to keep a golden rectangle aspect ratio in my most-recently-used crop lists for just such an occasion. I can quick-draw it at need. It’s presence in the MRU list also forces me to to consider it every time the dialog pops up.

I first cropped the image using the custom aspect ratio of 1.618:1 (the Golden Rectangle). While the crop tool was engaged, I used the [ O ] key to cycle through the compositional overlays until I found the Golden Ratio tool.  I tend to use this tool much like I do a Rule of Thirds. I place my subject (the insect) appropriately at the intersection of the ratio guides.  The subject matter dictated that it is strongest if I put the bug on the lower left intersection.  I bisected its body with a vertical guide along the bilateral symmetry line common to most living things. I then looked for a compelling place to place the horizontal guide.  Insects, as we remember from grade school, have a three-segmented body. The anterior segment is usually the largest. It made sense to me visually to divide the body between the thorax and the abdomen. 

As you can see in the final crop, the insect has plenty of space into which to look. the balance from mid-ground to background is maintained leaving our subject in the foreground.  A nice balance of a smaller light area to bigger dark really helps the image pop!

Cropped to a golden rectangle and composed on a golden ratio… is it more pleasing? Well, that is up for you, the architects and artists to decide. Personally, I think it is classic… or is that classical?

Next time you are stuck looking for a shape and placement, consider this ratio – it’s golden.

Rikk Flohr © 2013

Holy Crop! — Lightroom 5: The Crop Enhancements

Announcing the Public Beta for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5™ and what it means to Crop Aficionados all over the world!

2:30 PM CT Monday, April 15th. Adobe has announced a public beta of the next major upgrade to their industry-leading photographer’s software: Lightroom. We here at Holy Crop! have reviewed the features and found those items which either appeal to or will make the crop conscious’ lives easier.

Here, in no particular order are the new crop features/enhancements in Lightroom 5

1. Maintain Crop Center When Changing Aspect Ratios

“no more crop resetting angst”

In Lightroom 4 or 3 or … when you’ve carefully set a crop on your image and decide that you needed to change your aspect ratio say from a free-form crop for content to a 5×7 crop to print on a specific piece of paper, Lightroom would rest the crop back to the center of your image. It was very frustrating. Lightroom 5 changes all of that with a new enhancement that keeps your crop centered on the existing cropped area when changing aspect ratios.  This helps keep your image composed (more or less) as you had it instead of forcing you to reinvent the crop.  See this example:

Note that merely selecting the 1×2 user-defined Crop Aspect Ratio preset changes the aspect ratio but preserves the crop location on center – rather than resetting the crop entirely. 

2. Paper Size Crop Overlays

“finally a compositional Overlay that mimics your output!”

Lightroom has always had a series of cropping guide overlays to guide you in composition while cropping your image. I have written about them in detail here. For review you can toggle through the overlays while the crop tool is invoked by using the [O] key. [Shift][O] toggles you through variations which exist for some of the overlays. Lightroom 5 adds a new overlay and it is very exciting. 

Ladies and Gents… there is a new overlay in town!

I am going to take partial credit for this one (whether deserved or not) as I requested this feature on Adobe’s official feedback forum long ago and even mocked up a crude prototype that is vaguely accurate in forecasting this future feature.

Cycling through the overlays with [O] brings you to this little gem:

The Aspect Ratios Overlay,as it is named,  is now found at the end of the list of overlays and provides you with guides showing common print sizes to help you in cropping. This ensures that you can create a crop that preserves room for future standard print or screen display sizing.  Not only is is a nifty overlay, it is also somewhat customizable.

If you navigate to Tools>Crop Guide Overlay>Choose Aspect Ratios… you can choose the guides which appear in the overlay. Nifty!

You can choose only the sizes you wish to appear on the overlay and customize to your style of shooting and output. Again: Nifty! Unfortunately, there is no provision for custom overlay aspect ratios but this is a huge step forward.

[Shift][O] Cycles the overlay so that it can be used as a portrait overlay in a landscape image and a vice versa.  I predict this will be come the studio photographer’s second favorite overlay after Rule of Thirds.

3. Customizing the Crop Overlays You Wish To Cycle

“only the Compositional Overlays you want to see”

Another augment to the Crop Overlays is the ability to turn them on and off so that as you cycle through them with [Shift][O], you can bypass overlays you are unlikely to use.

 

Simply turn off the overlays you don’t use and simplify your compositional guides. (It would have been nice if the order would have been the same as the actual cycle order however)  All and all a nice augment to your cropping and compositional needs.

4. Adaptable Grid And Guides

“additional tools to straighten and compose”

New in Lightroom 5 is an adaptable Grid Overlay that can be used to sort elements, augment transformations and further guide you in composition and correction.  View>Loupe Overlay> takes you to a screen where you can choose a Grid or a Guide Overlay for your screen.

Inspection of this function reveals a new series of hints in Lightroom 5 in the form of the “Hold Control for Options” hint that tells you what you might do with this tool.

Holding down the [CTRL/CMD] key allows you to control the Grid size/spacing and the opacity of the lines. Very cool very customizable.  A horizontal and vertical guide is available to use alone or in conjunction with the customizable grid.

5. Aspect Ratio in Lens Correction

“when you just need a little tweak to make it fit”

In the “I am not quite sure how I feel about this” category, is the new Aspect Ratio Slider in Lightroom 5. It is located in the Lens Correction panel in the Manual tab and designed to adjust perspective-corrected distortion. . It allows you to tweak an image’s aspect ratio either horizontally or vertically. What is really going on is a slight distortion and not really a crop but it could make up for a crop that was just off and there are no pixels remaining for recovery but you still need it to fit that paper or web frame hole.  I included it because it can help with an errant crop if nothing else.

6. Upright

“quickly and effortlessly correct perspective and level.”

Staying in the Lens Correction panel, we have an exciting new feature called Upright.

A redesigned Basic tab in the Lens Correction panel now has a series of features whereby Lightroom 5 will automatically attempt to Straighten your Horizon and correct Perspective in your image.  As we know from reading here any straightening or perspective correction is a crop by default as you are trimming pixels from your image.  You can let Upright tune your image automatically with a button or adjust Level, Vertical and Scaling individually.

In addition, Upright is sync-able and preset-able so you can automate this in your particular workflow.

7. Compositional Overlays Now In Develop

“compositional help in the same module where you tweak your image”

When Lightroom 4 was announced, Holy Crop! wrote about the Overlay feature added and how it could help your cropping and composition. Read about it here.

Just like before you can have an overlay in Library Loupe view.  [CMD/CTRL] allows you to adjust the Opacity of the Overlay and subdue the outer portion.  The Big Deal here is now this Overlay is visible in the Develop Module!  You can now adjust your image while viewing the Overlay at the same time.  Unfortunately that doesn’t extend to Crop where the Crop Compositional Overlays take priority.  Someday, perhaps.  Right now, it does coexist peacefully (more or less) with the new Grid and Guide functions.

With Lightroom 5’s new ability to manage your PNG files right inside the catalog, this gives you powerful leverage to catalog and implement your Overlays.

There you have it: Lightroom 5 and 7 new Crop/Compositional Features to help you Crop your images better and more efficiently. .

The Cropist is pleased with this crop of crop enhancements.

Information and the download links for the Lightroom 5 Public beta are available from Adobe Labs.

Rikk Flohr – The Cropist © 2013

Lightroom™ Crop Overlays in Action

In the previous article, I laid bare, for the world to see, the cropping overlays in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. You can read that article here. I thought it might be fun to take an actual image through several of the different crop overlays and evaluate the different results.

This screen capture shows cropping using the Rule of Thirds as our guide. The overlays are faint in this image.  The frog’s eye is the most important part of the image so it occupies the upper left power point.  I had predetermined how much hand and back space I was going to leave in all these shots to simplify the comparison and create a nice framing effect. 

Lightroom has more than one crop overlay as I wrote about in the earlier article. I threw out the grid and the diagonals as being ‘not well suited’ for this particular subject. That left me with three others (besides the Rule of Thirds) to try.

I decided to tackle the Golden Ratio, next.  Placing the frog’s eye on the golden section corner yields the image above.  It gives more space (presumably leaping-into space) but it also allows a distraction to intrude in the form of the green blob at the top.  We could easily fix that in post-processing if we chose so that isn’t huge. The image does feel a little looser.

The Triangles overlay is interesting.  It cuts a diagonal from UL to LR and then sends perpendicular lines to the LL and UP corners.  Placing the frog’s eye at the intersection results in a much tighter image.  The frog doesn’t seem crowded. There is space into which to look But he looks less like leaping than in the Golden Ratio overlay.  There isn’t a right or wrong here. The story you are telling should drive the crop. Is he about to jump? Crop him that way then!

Lastly, I decided to try a Golden Spiral or Fibonacci Sequence.  This results in the tightest image of the group. It isn’t uncomfortably tight, and, in this aspect ratio, doesn’t vary that much from the triangle overlay.  All-in-all, it is an acceptable crop.

Story should drive your cropping. You are telling a story with your picture. You want to make that story strongest by cropping your image to tune it to your story.  Depending upon the story you want to tell, any of these crops might be the best. All of them certainly have the benefit of tried-and-true proportioning schemes via the included cropping guide overlays.

Next time you are cropping, try more than one compositional method and see which tunes your image best to your story.

Rikk Flohr © 2011

Crop Shop: Introducing the Rule of Fifths

Because sometimes the Rule of Thirds just isn’t enough.

In the last article, I introduced the concept of the Rule of Fifths. It is time to explore that concept in-depth.

The Rule of Thirds has long been a staple of the composition world. Sometimes, however, the composition with which nature presents us doesn’t slice well into a 3×3 grid.  Onto the image above, I have laid a Rule of Thirds grid in green and a Rule of Fifths grid in red.

Looking at the originally captured image above.  There is a road immediately out of frame to the left that I was cropping in-camera.  There is also a wonderful curve in the clouds I am trying to maintain. These factors drove the in-camera framing.  The sun is way too far left for normal sensibilities but the presence of the small peak holds it within the image.  When the Rule of Thirds isn’t possible, the Rule of fifths is often the next best place to turn.

Of what is this a picture? This is always the first question we should ask ourselves.  Obviously it is the sunset and the sun is our focal point.  Next, where is the most exciting region of the picture: earth or sky?  For me it is the sky.  These two realizations dictate how I will approach my cropping.

I start by cropping in from the bottom to place the horizon on the lower rule of thirds line. The sky now takes on added importance but the balance on the picture is markedly skewed to the left.  The sun is actually near the Rule of Seventh’s line which is a very unusual compositional position.  We need more work.

Perhaps moving the horizon to the lowest Rule of Fifth will help.  This is an interesting choice.  At one fifth of the frame, the land still manages to anchor the scene.  Any less land and the horizontal panoramic crop would loose its anchor and appear odd. 

In this crop we left the horizon on the Rule of Fifths and cropped in  from the right to move the sun into the leftmost Rule of Fifths.  The balance is better. The scene is still anchored.  We have maintained all of the sun’s rays and kept the curve of the clouds. The dark corner upper right balances the weight of the bright lower left corner.

Combining the Rule of Thirds for the horizon and the Rule of Fifths for the sun we end up with this effort.  This is the same image onto which the grids were overlaid at the beginning of this article.  This image strikes a nice balance. The sacrificed item is the edge of the cloud curve and the reward is a little better placement for the sun which is, after all, our focal point. It sits now at the intersection of the Rule of Thirds and the Rule of Fifths.

Rule of Fifths is a great go-to point when you can’t make Rule of Thirds work.  It is an aesthetically pleasing place to try that arrives at a point far faster than trial-and-error might have.  It is unfortunate that few image editing programs offer a Rule of Fifths compositional overlays.  When this happens you can eyeball the Rule of Thirds grid and know that if you split the difference in a grid you are on a 1/6 placement and that you must move your imaginary split slightly to one side to approximate the Rule of Fifth.  

Working the Rule of Thirds against the Rule of Fifths can sometimes create the tension you need while giving you the versatility to create many strong versions of your image. At least it gives you a tried and true place to start.

If you want to go nuts you can go after a horizon on the Rule of Sevenths and the Sun on the Rule of Thirds (if you are willing to crop portrait).  But, as they say, that is a topic for another day.

Rikk Flohr © 2011