Photoshop is the alpha and omega of photo editing apps, but every once in awhile someone comes up with a way to do a specific function even better than Adobe. A case in point is PhotoScissors, a US$19.99 Mac app that makes it easy to remove an object from a photo, then paste it in somewhere else. This can be done in Photoshop, and I marvel watching pros do this. It takes more than a few steps, and can involve the Photoshop Magic Wand or the Quick Selection Tool. PhotoScissors works differently. Take your photo, and paint some broad green strokes on what you want to preserve. A remove tool is used to paint red on objects you want to remove. You often want to remove a background, while you want to preserve a foreground object or person. The app does a quick smart analysis of what is highlighted, and quickly gets rid of the unwanted background. There are lots of reasons to have a tool like this: product photos, separating objects from a background, creating an isolated image with a new background, etc... I tried the app on a variety of photos, and it worked well. It's not always perfect, but with a little effort you can clean up anything that is missing in the cutout. PhotoScissors is often faster than any other method I've used, including Photoshop. PhotoScissors isn't a replacement for Photoshop or other high-end editors -- it just makes cutouts easy. There are tools to zoom, undo, and change background color, as well as controls to change the size of the brush. Help is built in, although it is pretty basic. On some objects, I found the Photoshop Quick Select tool just as effective and quicker, other times PhotoScissors was more efficient. If the foreground and background object have similar colors, PhotoScissors will confuse them, but it is easy to clean up and re-render. PhotoScissors is a tool for someone who spends a lot of time cutting out objects to separate them from a background. At $19.99 it is a lot cheaper than Photoshop, but of course the app is a one-trick pony. If it's a trick you need, PhotoScissors is a worthwhile investment. PhotoScissor is not in the Mac app store, but you can buy it direct online. You can also download a demo version and see if it works for you. The app requires an Intel Mac running OS X Lion or later, with a 1 GHz processor, and at least 256 MB of RAM.
If your business needs to combine one image with another, you can insert a cropped image into another photo on your Mac. For example, you may have a photo of several new product boxes and you want to crop out one product box and paste it into a photo that shows people using the product. All new Macs come with Apple’s free Preview application already installed, which you can use to open and edit images.
Cropping and cutting is a basic function in photo editing software that nearly everyone uses at one time or another. Reasons can vary: maybe you must honor someone's request to be excluded from a group shot, or you just want the spotlight on yourself. On a Mac, use the native application iPhoto to crop a picture or collection of pictures. Save the new version for sharing on your social networks or for printing. All you need is a Mac with iPhoto installed, a copy of photo and a few minutes to work.
Q. How do you crop an image in the Mac Preview program? I don’t see a cropping icon in the tool bar. Or do I need another program? A. You can crop photos, graphics and PDF files right in Preview, the Mac’s built-in image-editing and viewer program. To crop a photo or graphic open on your screen, you must first select the area of the image you want to keep. Drag the mouse cursor over the part of the photo you want, which creates a dotted line around the area. Click and drag the blue dots on the corners and center of the outlined box on the screen to adjust the selected portion of the image and then press the Command and K keys to delete everything outside dotted lines. (As an alternative, you can also click on Tools in the Preview menu bar and choose Crop.) If you want to trim away parts of a PDF file in Preview, go to the Tools menu and choose Rectangular Selection (instead of Text Selection) and then drag the cursor around the area of the file you want to use. You can then press the Command and K keys (or choose Crop from the Tools menu) to trim away the unwanted parts. Preview usually pops up an alert box to warn that cropping the file hides — but does not delete — the content outside the selection area, and that it may still be visible in other programs. (You can undo the cropping later by opening the document, going to the File menu, choosing Revert To and then Browse All Versions to get back to the original version.) Image If you don’t want to use the Photos program, the Mac’s Preview app has a Crop button in the Markup toolbar for quick photo trims.Credit...The New York TimesWhen you have the Markup tool bar showing in the Preview window, you can also click the Crop button to remove the unselected parts of the file from view. To see the Markup tool bar and its other shortcuts for annotating PDF files, click the encircled pen icon on the right side of the Preview window. You can arrange this tool bar to suit your needs by going to the View menu and selecting Customize Toolbar. If your main concern is enhancing your digital pictures, the Photos app that comes with the Mac operating system has many more tools for editing and organizing your photographs. In addition to cropping and straightening your images, the Photos app has controls for adjusting color and making other improvements. |