When working with a document in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, there will often be pixels outside the boundaries of the document. You often don't even realize they are there.

The Problem With This

Those pixels outside the boundaries of your document are not harmless. Even though you cannot SEE them, Photoshop still counts them as part of your document . . . and they increase your document's file size.

Here's an example:I grabbed a random layered scrapbook page from my scrapbooking folder. See the image above. This page has not been cropped. The black outline represents the boundaries of my scrapbook page. Can you believe how much stuff is outside the boundaries of my page?? I really had no idea.

Look At the File Size

My page (above) registered at 377.97 MB. That’s over a third of a gigabyte on my computer’s hard drive. So what can I do about it??

The Solution

First, make a note of your document's file size. Then, crop the document (see below) and see the difference.

Crop the Document

• Press Ctrl A (Mac: Cmd A) to select the entire document.
• In the Menu Bar, choose Image > Crop.
• Press Ctrl D (Mac: Ctrl D) to deselect.

NOTE: After I cropped my page, it was 215.13 MB. Much better! And now, all those extra pixels are removed from outside the boundaries of my document.

BY THE WAY . . .

You do not have to crop your layered scrapbook pages. It’s not wrong to keep your file sizes large. In fact, it’s also not wrong to delete your layered scrapbook pages altogether.