How to crop an image using the Quick Selection Tool

[Atsie]

Alright, well this is a really simple tutorial and shouldn't take that long to go through. But I figured I might as well put it out there since not many places have a cropping tutorial.

Alright so this is using Photoshop again. Once again it can be done on GIMP or another photo editing program. Soooo open up Photoshop and open up your image you plan on cropping out. Me, I like wolves so I chose a wolf image.



Make sure the layer is changed from "Background" to "Layer 0" or "Layer 1". You do this by double clicking the name of the layer and clicking "OK". Next, you're going to use the Quick Selection Tool which is located along the sidebar. Make sure that it's set to the "+" sign to show you are adding the selection.



Now you select the areas that you want to crop outside of the image. For this image, it means all the areas outside of the wolf. I'm generally picky when it comes to this so I go into detail about my selections. If you find that you have selected over an area you want to keep you can simply click Ctrl + Z or go to the top and click the Quick Selection Tool with the "-" sign next to it; then remove the selected area.



Once you've selected the entire area you want to delete simply press "Delete" and watch the image be cropped from the area! Next you're going to open up the background image you want to use as a new Photoshop document. In this case, I chose a forest scene.



Next we're going to drag the wolf from the one image over to the other. You can just click on the layer and literally drag it over. Once you have it on the other canvas, move it around so you have the place were you want it. Now, I didn't really think about the scenery for this image so it actually looks awkward. If you'll see the wolf image has a bit of snow on it yet the background is green and full of forestry. You'll want to keep that in mind when editing images as it may turn out terribly with the final product. In this case, I'm just going to leave it for time purposes.



So, the top of my wolf looks a bit flat. That's where the image was cut off from. Once again, for time purposes, I'll leave that be however in a later tutorial I will show you had to add a Layer Mask to make that blend in with the background so it looks more legitimate. To finalize the product, you can run along the edges of the wolf with the Eraser tool for areas that look a bit choppy. You can also add a Blur effect on the outside or even add layer effects on the wolf itself! Though that is the basics of cropping an image and placing it on another image.

As a last minute note, please make sure to leave a link back to the original image due to copyright infringement. If the image is under the Creative License Agreement then you're off the hook.

In a later tutorial I will show you how you can do it with a Magic Eraser Tool and the Lasso Tool, the Magic Wand Tool and then simply using the Eraser tool. Thanks for reading; hope this helps!

[Epic.]

Nice tutorial, thanks for posting

[Atsie]

No problem. :P

[Kastler]

Nice and simple tutorial but very detailed. Thanks for sharing

[jung3o]

There are so many different things to do with Photoshop. This is one of the very useful tools in Photoshop.
I bet someone can just fill up the whole forum just with Photoshop tutorials.

nicely done.

[Nyan]

That's a really beginnerish way to do it, but it's the start.
You have a long tutorial, KIU, but make them shorter for such easy things.

[Atsie]

The tutorial was supposed to be for beginners. There are several different ways to have it done though considering Photoshop tutorials are so common I didn't find the need to create several different tutorials for the same ending result.

[Turbo]

Nice written tutorial.

[Atsie]

Thanks.