Selection

Selecting the area you want

Drag with the left mouse button pressed to move the selection area.

Drag with the right mouse button pressed to resize the selection area. The top of the selection bounding box remains fixed to minimise the adjustments needed - set the top edge first then resize with right button. The selection box remains in the selected aspect ratio and is constrained to within the border area.

Holding down the CTRL key restricts movement to the vertical plane only, while holding down the ALT key restricts movement to the horizontal plane only.

The black (or coloured) border area around the image may be included. Certain combinations of aspect ratios with large safe areas may not give as much border as you would wish, so the border can be enlarged if necessary.

Unlocking the Aspect Ratio

The whole point of this program is maintain a fixed aspect ratio. However, for special purposes it is possible to unlock the aspect ratio and mark out any selection area. You might want to crop say a small square image then place it within in a 16:9 frame. Hold down CTRL whilst dragging with the right mouse button pressed to alter the width only. You will need to set the height first by just right-drag then alter the width with CTRL - right drag.  Another right-drag will cause the aspect ratio to be restored. Then save the image but make sure the Resize option is not checked. See also Reload Last Saved image.

 

 

Show Safe Area        Safe Area Size   

Due to the fact that most TV's over-scan, some parts of the image near the edges may not be seen. The 'Show Safe Area' option displays an extra selection frame as guide to placing your selection rectangle. By default this is 90% of the true selected area. The safe area size can be varied in 5% steps from 75% to 95%.

For widescreen TV's the over-scan is meant to be no more than 3.5%, but it's not an exact science.

Fit Selection to Safe Area   

With this option selected, when a new image is loaded the selected area will default to fitting the safe area.

Fit Selection to Height   

With this option selected, when a new image is loaded the selected area will default to fitting the height of the image. Otherwise it defaults to fitting the image width.

Reset Default Selection   

Simply resets the selection bounding box back to the default, same as when a new image is loaded.

 

Aspect Ratio

Select from this pick-list the desired aspect ratio. For TV there are, of course, 4:3 and 16:9. There is also a selection of standard photo print sizes.

At the bottom of the list is a 'Custom' option. Enter width and height eg 1.6 and 1, 1024 and 576, 10 and 12. The scaling is not important, just the ratio.

Landscape / Portrait

Although produced primarily to crop landscape images for TV, the portrait mode allows cropping for producing a portrait print, for example.

Status Bar

Image Size:   The size of the original image in pixels.

Selection:     The size of the selection bounding box in pixels.

Output Folder:  The folder which will be used for Save operations. Set using 'Save As...'     

 

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