The next step is to crop the image. Ideally the image should fill the “projected screen”. This creates a larger and therefore more dynamic presentation...it dominates. As a PC or Laptop monitor is wider than it’s height a Landscape format image works best, as opposed to a Portrait format image. You can, however, project a Portrait format image, it will simply look smaller than a Landscape format image because it does not fill the available width and is therefore less dominant.

There several ways to crop an image. You can go to “Image > Image Size” and input your required size, making sure that the Constrain Proportions dialogue box is ticked. You can visually crop the image using the Crop Tool, with the Width and Height boxes at the top of the screen blank, to give you your required Composition and then use “Image > Image Size” as above.

However for the ultimate digital projected image the best way to get exactly the right size easily is to select the Crop Tool and enter required size in the Width and Height boxes.

For example, if you know that the image size should be 1400 pixels by 1050 pixels, you enter 1400px in the Width box and 1050px in the Height box to get the right sized full frame image. (Do not forget the “px” part of the input or you’ll end up with inches or centimetres instead of pixels, and a very large file). If you have chosen to submit a Portrait size image you must still input 1050px in the Height box but delete whatever is in the Width box so that it is blank. This is important as anything larger than this will result in a part of the image being lost when projected.

Note: It seems that now we should always use 1400 pixels by 1050 pixels unless otherwise informed.

 

Using the Crop Tool and holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse pointer from the top left of your required image down to the bottom right. Now let go and check that you are happy with your selection. If not you can grab one of the crop “handles” in the corner of the image and resize. You can also grab one of the crop “handles” at the centre of each crop line and move the whole crop without changing it’s size (you can also do this by using the arrow keys on the keyboard). When you are happy press the Enter key. The image then crops to that chosen and will probably look smaller on the screen. How small depends on the resolution of the original image….see example below.

Now simply save the image as a High Resolution Jpeg.

Go to “File > Save As”

Select JPEG from the Format drop-down list and click the Save button.

You then get a prompt referring to image quality. A Jpeg is a compressed file. The lower the quality the smaller the resultant file size, but image quality is reduced. In this case select the maximum quality of 12 …. See the screen grabs below.

JOB DONE!