Photo Mechanic applies a non-destructive crop to photos, meaning that the original version of the photo is still available when you export cropped versions.
You can find the crop tools in the side panel of the preview window or simply press the C key to toggle the crop cursor on and off.
When cropping, you can resize crops by dragging on a corner, move the cropped area by dragging inside the selected area, and rotate by dragging outside the selected area. When rotating, you will also see a grid to help you align your crop with the image.
Preview your crop by either using the "eyeball crop" button in the crop tools or by using the P key to toggle preview on and off.
Nudging Crops
Move the crop using modifier-arrows while the Crop tool is active. Hold down the option key on Mac or Ctrl key on Windows and use the arrow keys to move the crop by ten pixels at a time.
Reproducing Crops
From a Contact sheet: You can copy a crop from one image and reproduce it on another single image or batch of selected images. You can use the contextual menu from a contact sheet. Right-click on a thumbnail with a crop and choose Crop > Copy Crop. Then select other images, right-click them.
- Paste Crop: Adds the copied crop only to the single item being right-clicked.
- Paste Crop to selected items: Adds the copied crop to all selected items.
From the Preview window: You can use the contextual menu in the Preview window to duplicate crops between images. To copy a crop, right-click on an image in the Preview window and choose Crop > Copy Crop. Then in a different image, right-click in the image and select Crop > Paste Crop.
Clearing Crops
When viewing a cropped image in the Preview Window, you can clear the crop by pressing Shift-c (Windows) or Option-c (MacOS.
Crop Settings
For more options, click the Settings button in the Crop panel.
- Shield area outside Crop checkbox controls whether the area outside of the crop is darkened. This helps you visualize what the actual crop will look like.
- Show Grid line overlay gives you a grid to help in straightening and composing the crop.
- Show Crop center crosshair allows you to turn the center on or off as needed.
- Show fine grid lines when rotating shows a smaller grid when rotating.
- Crop Shape The crop area can be constrained in proportion. The numbers refer to proportions rather than units, i.e. a 3:2 proportion will keep the crop the same shape as a 35mm format image.
The crop will remain with the image and will be displayed in the contact sheet so you can always see which images have crops set. When images are Saved As or Exported to HTML etc, the crop can be applied to the resulting image. In relevant dialog boxes,there are Apply checkboxes so you can have the choice of cropping, or not, during that operation. For example, the Save As dialog:
You can save Snapshots of constrained crop settings which can be a great time saver if you commonly use a number of standard crop ratios.
You can also access Crop tools through the contextual menu by right-clicking or ctrl-clicking on an image in the Preview Window. Copy/Paste/Clear Rotation/Remove/Make Unconstrained and Settings are all accessible from the Crop submenu.