Another method no one has mentioned is to simply change your canvas size. In photoshop, when you do this, the whole image is still there.. and you can drag it around to pick the best fit for your new canvas size.
Or just get Gimp for free. That's what I use. GIMP - Downloads Siskiyou; Your caboose is magnificent! Best!
No promotion for Photoshop here! I have it because I needed it for my consulting work, and it was thus a necessity and, yes, a tax write-off. Many other programs can do the same cropping, and some of them are free! Photoshop is overkill in a big way until you get into commercial art production, where I was for many years.
Here's the full-size image: And a 100% crop: The images are a bit noisy, so I am still experimenting with noise removal tools in Paint Shop Pro.
Here's my attempt at a 100% crop. I've been playing around with a new light box I built; but unfortunately the combination of my aging 300D and the lenses I have don't make for the best macro shots. Here's a shot with my 50mm prime, stopped down around f22. I still had to bump the brightness and contrast a bit to get the truck detail to come out... I'm going to try again with my Digicam, which sadly will probably work better since the smaller sensor provides a larger depth of field. I really need a macro lens. Oh, I almost forgot. I took this photo because of the excellent end platform on the new Fox Valley Model cars I just received. That's got to be one of the best from the factory platforms....
Can I try ?? Here is a 640 of the portal of a new Z-Scale bridge. No filters, no sharpening, just the cut.
Ok, took some with my SD1000 digicam, these are a little better. Same shot, more or less: End shot: And the door, hard to get good printing on a wavy surface, but they did...
What's the purpose? I'm not an expert but my impression is the various scales make cropping mostly un-desirable . O scale looks good close up at full frame and N scale looks good far away at full frame. I think it's usually best to compose and shoot a photo according to the results desired, intense cropping looks like it usually just brings out the worst in photos?....dave
I think you're right for what I'm doing, uber close ups on a single item. I'm not sure that was the original intent of the 100% crop thread as much as it was just "more detail". I finally got my new camera, here's some updated attempts. I think these are better. The whole shot, resized: 100% of the end platform: 100% of the door: I will do no better without a macro or close up lens, so I'm going to stop now. I really like this Fox Valley car though; the end platform detail is awesome, better than most of my other cars. Paint and printing are on par with Micro Trains and Atlas. If the rest of their models are this good I'm going to be buying more.
My purpose in starting this thread has to do with the resolution of images posted for the web. Trainboard displays images at 640 pixels wide, and allows for larger images in a pop-up window. I take shots at 3008 x 2000 pixels. If I reduce that to 640 x 425 pixels (a scale reduction), I'm reducing the resolution by 4.7 times. If someone wants to enlarge a part of that 640 wide image to see details, the details will be blurrier than in the original 3008 wide image. 4.7 pixels will be squeezed into 1.0 pixels. When I do a 100% crop, I'm not squeezing pixels in the details that I chose to display. It's 1 to 1. So the details are sharper. What I'm doing is blowing up a part of the image to its full resolution. It really has nothing to do with cropping for better composition, although that it sometimes inevitable.
Since this is under railfanning I infer that 1:1 scale pics are acceptable. The reason I do "cropped shots" is two fold: Point out interesting details The picture looks better but getting rid of background clutter Interesting detail, (the car number on top),and the chain link ads a certain aesthetic that the original did not posses. "Attempt at Art" Interesting Details: Really not aesthetic or interesting at all: You could call my 640 images "Attempts at Art"
