Aspect Ratio for dummies

[dtissagirl]

So. This is not a tutorial exactly. It is a plea. Please please please stop screwing with the aspect ratio of your icons/wallpaper/digital art.

[warning: lots and lots of images inside the cut-tags]

Comments

[vetur]

I'm soooo pimping this.

[crackers4jenn]

EE! That's just brilliant.

In PSP, for cropping - when I re-size the picture to get it the size I want, I re-size it using the "lock aspect ratio" feature, so it makes the whole picture smaller - not width one percentage and height the other. When people take a cap, and instead of cropping it, they just shrink it down to 100x100 with the messed up aspect ratio? ARGH.

Thank you muchly for this :D

[dtissagirl]

Dude. I always think people will get the concept of aspect ratio and not try to fit a rectangular image inside a squared space... unfortunately, that's what they try to do. ::stabs::

And I guess the "lock aspect ratio" option in PSP corresponds to the "constrain proportions" one in PS7. :)

[wanderingdream]

the thing with cropping in psp is when you first crop the image, before resizing it... its usually a good idea to also sharpen the image at least once before cropping it... it helps make the image not be so "softened" (like, if you had taken a sharpened image and applied the soften tool... the icon looks like that if you don't sharpen it before resizing i've found) and i agree with the lock aspect ratio feature and i also choose weighted average cause that's what works best for me (cause there's that whole dropdown menu to lock different kinds of aspect ratios)

[dtissagirl]

Photoshop will also blur the image when you crop/resize it. I sharpen it back again after cropping, but I figure doing it backwards will work too. :)

[faithx5]

Dude. Thank you so much for doing this. Even though looking at all the screwy-aspect ones in the examples was quite painful.

And heh. I crop differently than either of your ways. Yours are probably better, though. But I love that there's eighteen different ways to do pretty much everything in Photoshop.

[dtissagirl]

I don't think it's a matter of which way is better or not. I pretty much listed the 2 ways of cropping that I find easier :) Right now I can think of at least another two (resizing first then croping the extra parts of image; do the crop selection with the shift key pressed to make it squared and then resize) that will work as well as the ones I talked about.

[faithx5]

No, see, my way has too many extra steps, because I use the marquee tool to select the area I want, and then move guides to the edges of the selection, then deselect, then crop using the crop tool. (This is because I can never get the crop tool to go exactly where I want it, especially if it's near an edge, and the marquee tool is easier to control, and I didn't know you could just select "crop" from a menu while you had the area selected. So I learned a helpful shortcut!) Thusly, your ways are better. ;)

[dtissagirl]

Yeah, you go a really complex way. :) I don't fiddle much with cropping anymore, because it's mostly automatic now. I just make a square with the crop tool and then move it around using my keyboard arrows to place it right where I want it.

Also? I'm extremely lazy, and being able to crop and resize at the same time is REALLY important to me. *g*

[morgaine22]

Oh God. I'm actually using algebra in real life.

(Thanks for the 4:3/16:9 regular TV/widescreen clarification. Muchas gracias.)

[dtissagirl]

Hee. Maybe it's because I'm a math geek at heart, but I always think that if know a little bit of math, these image softwares are be easier to understand. They are ALL algebra, after all. :)

[poisonapple73]

Thank you. I am, without question, a moron when it comes to this. For ages, I had no clue what aspect ratio was. :)