Duplicating Crops

[NeilR]

I have some need for repeating a crop across many images, sometimes hundreds.  Most of this is for product shooting, where different versions of the same product are shot; the product is the same size.  In other cases I might shoot different exposures and want to do a deep crop across these exposures just to evaluate the final selected image.

I don't think this can be done with the current version?

I guess this would require either a separate snapshot, or maybe even better a check box "retain position" or something like that, which could be embedded in the existing snapshot, along with the current coordinates of the crop. 

Regards,
Neil

[Hayo Baan]

Neil,

PM is not a photo editing program.  While it has certain functions that allow some minor editing (e.g., crop and rotate), this editing is just to support the main purposes of PM, namely (in my opinion): browsing, selecting, and tagging images.  In the near future, cataloguing will be added to this.  I would vote against adding all sorts of editing capabilities to PM (there are many better programs to do that) as that would keep the developers away from adding features in the main areas.

(Note: PM is not a Lightroom clone!)

Just a humble opinion of a happy PM user

[NeilR]

I don't understand, Hayo.  I'm not asking for a new editing tool, just to incorporate the existing soft crop into some sort of snapshot that can be copied to other images.  In general, there is a philosophy here that most anything applied to one image can be cloned out to other images, which is the underlying principle of the snapshots and multi-select and apply capability.  Keywords, ratings, classes, etc., can be cloned.

There is another good use for this...  a soft crop applied to an image is lost if that image is edited and saved.  My workflow is such that I often end up with an 'A', 'B'.... etc. copy of an image, each with successive edits.  Tis comes from doing a save as... after the edit (of the raw file) into the same JPG output folder.  The original image will have the crop I want.  It would be nice to be able to clone that crop to the successor images.  This particular application is related to a previous thread here discussing the possibility of applying soft crops to NEFs and having the Extract routine apply that crop.  if that were done, it would eliminate the need to clone the crop from one successor JPG to later generations.

Regards,
Neil

[Hayo Baan]

Neil,

I understand.  However, while tagging and stuff can be applied to multiple images in one go (one of the main purposes of PM in my opinion), you're now asking for the ability to apply image edits to multiple images.  This is batch processing, and I would say more the realm of image editors.

On the other hand, if the edits are soft edits only, it may not be too difficult to "copy" these settings to other images, but this all depends on how Kirk et al have implemented these soft edits.

By the way, as you are already talking about editing the image, why don't you crop the image in your image editor?

[NeilR]

Hayo,

I am looking for a soft crop that can be tweaked after it is mass applied to images.  The ability to tweak it is critical.  Nikon Capture V4 does this (to raw files) but it's deprecated.  Capture NX does not allow you to tweak the crop; you have to delete and recreate the crop.  PS can batch process crops but it is a hard crop, which would be destructive in the case of misaligned subjects.

PM is uniquely positioned to be able to do this because of the way it manages and displays the soft crop.   And, after all, a soft crop is simply a pair of x,y coordinates.  It's not rocket science, it's not destructive and does not require manipulation of the pixels, as a levels adjustment would (sugggested in another recent thread).


Neil

[Hayo Baan]

I am looking for a soft crop that can be tweaked after it is mass applied to images.  The ability to tweak it is critical.  Nikon Capture V4 does this (to raw files) but it's deprecated.  Capture NX does not allow you to tweak the crop; you have to delete and recreate the crop.

Ah, so you were a huge fan of the old Capture crop as well then, me too    Indeed a pity that NX doesn't allow tweaking the crop anymore    Ah well, I've learned to live with it (I mean, it offers so many other great things).

PS can batch process crops but it is a hard crop, which would be destructive in the case of misaligned subjects.

PM is uniquely positioned to be able to do this because of the way it manages and displays the soft crop.   And, after all, a soft crop is simply a pair of x,y coordinates.  It's not rocket science, it's not destructive and does not require manipulation of the pixels, as a levels adjustment would (sugggested in another recent thread).

I fully understand where you're coming from now.  Hopefully, as I said, "cloning" the crop isn't going to take a lot of effort to implement.