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Composition & Visual Design

Cropping

Removing part of an image after capture to change its framing, proportion or emphasis.

Measured in %

In depth

Cropping is a legitimate compositional tool, not an admission of failure — many celebrated photographs are heavily cropped. What it cannot change is perspective: the spatial relationships were fixed at the moment of exposure, so cropping into a wide shot never produces the same picture as standing closer. It also costs resolution.

Examples in practice

Cropping a 3:2 landscape to a panoramic 16:9 removes an empty foreground and strengthens the horizontal sweep.