In Part 3 of QwikLearn Photoshop Elements, we're going to work with the size of our photos and also tackle the subject of compositing photos. Let's start by looking at a very important tool, the Crop tool.

I'll demonstrate with the photo called boat-and-dock.jpg, which you'll find in the Part 3 lesson one practice files. The Crop tool is found near the bottom of the Toolbar. In the Modify section, click on it to make it the active tool and open Tool Options. On the left, you'll see a menu with some cropping options. I'll start with no restrictions. In the middle are some crop suggestions. Hover your mouse over the thumbnails to see suggested crop outlines. On the right, the current grid overlay option is set to None. But you can choose to other grid overlays. If I click on the middle option, and mouse over a thumbnail, I get a nice grid section.

The third grid overlay has even more sections, I'll choose the middle grid overlay option. By the way, you don't actually have to choose any of the thumbnail options, you can simply click and drag on the photo to create your own crop outline. Because I've chosen no restriction, this grid allows me to click and drag from any corner or side handle.

To resize the grid outline, press Escape or click on the Cancel button if you decide to start over. I'll open the menu and choose photo ratio this time, which will keep the crop outline the same proportion as the original photo. I'll mouse over the thumbnails. And the last one looks interesting to me. So I'll click on it. But that doesn't mean I have to accept this crop as it is. I really want to see the top of the lampstands so I can click and drag inside the crop outline to move it and I can click and drag from a corner handle to resize it. Photoshop Elements only gives me corner handles though because I've chosen to keep the original photo ratio. I'll drag out this lower corner just a little bit more and then click on the green checkmark to commit the crop. And there is my finished cropped photo.

Photoshop Elements tells me the current size of this photo. But let's say I have a five by seven photo frame and want to crop my photo to fit in that frame. I'll click Undo to revert to my original photo, and this time, I'll choose five by seven from the standard photo sizes listed. If I want a vertically cropped photo, I can click on the double arrows to switch the orientation to vertical. But since I want a horizontal photo, I'll click on the arrows again to go back to horizontal.

You can mouse over the crop suggestions if you wish, or simply click and drag on the photo to set your crop boundaries. Similar to the Transform tool, you can press Alt in Windows or Option on a Mac and click and drag from a corner handle to resize all four corners at the same time. I'll continue to drag this out just a little bit more from one corner right about there and maybe move it down just a slight bit. About like that. And now I can click on the green checkmark to commit the change. I'll press the Tab key to get rid of all desktop panels and press Ctrl zero in Windows or Command zero on a Mac to enlarge the viewing size to the available desktop space so you can get a better look at my newly cropped photo. Press tab again to bring all the panels back. So that's how to quickly crop a photo freehand or crop it to a standard photo size.