Sometimes photos need to be cropped to a non standard size. For example, I have three photos of a family that I want to crop to a four by four inch size. This is mom with the child, here's dad with the child. And here's the entire family. If you want to follow along, you'll find these photos in Part 3, lesson three of your practice folders.

Let's start with mother and child. I'll get the Crop tool and open Tool Options. But when I open the crop menu, I don't see a four by four inch option. So here's how to crop a non standard size. Choose No Restriction from the crop menu, click in the Width field and type four, for four inches. Press the Tab key to tab to the Height field, or simply click on the Height field itself and make sure that "in" for inches shows up in the Width field as it's possible to use a different unit of measurement such as "px" for pixel. So here in the Height field, I will also type four, and then I'm going to click in the Resolution field and type 300 for 300 pixels per inch.

Now you can click and drag a crop outline on your photo around the area that you want to crop. I'm just going to have kind of a close up here. I'll let go the mouse and maybe move this over just a little tiny bit... right about there, and then click on the checkmark to commit the change. I'll zoom in by pressing Ctrl plus in Windows or Command plus on a Mac to make my photo larger. To check the size, go to the Menu Bar and choose View Rulers to get a ruler around your photo. And sure enough, my photo is four inches by four inches.

Let's try the next one of dad and child. Unfortunately, the crop numbers I use for mom didn't stick. So I need to open the Crop menu again. This time I'll choose a standard photo size that's close to four by four inches, the four by six inch size. Then I'll change the six to a four. And I'll enter 300 for the resolution. And now I'm ready to click and drag my crop outline... right about there, and click on the checkmark to commit the change. I'll zoom in and choose View Rulers from the Menu Bar. Notice the ruler has a shortcut Ctrl Shift r in Windows or Command Shift r on a Mac. "R" for ruler. We'll use that next time. Sure enough, my photo is four by four inches.

Let's do that one more time with the family photo. I'll choose four by six from the menu, change the six to a four and add 300 pixels per inch for the resolution. I will click and drag around the family and make any adjustments that I need to and then click on the green checkmark to commit the crop. Now we can zoom in: Ctrl zero in Windows or Command zero on a Mac, to fit the photo to the desktop.

Let's check the ruler again. We'll use a shortcut this time Ctrl Shift r in Windows or Command Shift r on a Mac. So all three photos are now four by four inches. If you're following along you'll want to save all three images as we'll be using them shortly to create a composite image. And we'll be learning some fun tricks along the way. But be sure to choose File, Save As, and change the name slightly so you don't overwrite the original files. For example, you can add the word "cropped" to the original file name when you save them.