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Macro Studio Docs

Crop and Straighten

Click Crop in the Editor header, or press R, to open the crop editor. Use it to trim the thin border alignment often leaves, improve your framing, or fit a format.

Crop never throws pixels away. You can reopen the crop editor and change your crop any time.

The crop rectangle

Section titled “The crop rectangle”

A crop rectangle sits on the image, with a rule-of-thirds grid. The area outside it is darkened. If you haven’t cropped this result yet, it starts a little inside the edges, at the selected aspect ratio. That’s 4:5 until you pick another.

  • Drag a corner or an edge handle to resize the crop.
  • Drag inside the rectangle to move it.

Aspect ratio

Section titled “Aspect ratio”

The Aspect menu offers Free, Original (your image’s own shape), 1:1, 4:5, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, 2:3 and 16:9. 4:5 is a good default for social media.

Picking a ratio snaps the crop to it and keeps that shape as you resize. Pick Free to release it. The menu remembers your last choice, even after you quit.

Straighten

Section titled “Straighten”

The Straighten slider turns the image up to 180° either way. Use it to level a horizon, or to turn a sideways or upside-down shot the right way up. For a small change, hover over the slider and scroll, for fine 0.1° steps.

The crop can’t go past the edge of the turned image, so you never get empty corners. Near 45°, the crop can cover only part of the frame. At exactly 90° or 180°, it can cover the whole frame.

Zoom and pan

Section titled “Zoom and pan”

Scroll to zoom. ⌘0 / Ctrl+0 fits the image. Middle-drag, or drag outside the crop, to pan. Zoom in to crop close to an antenna without clipping it.

Apply, Reset, Cancel

Section titled “Apply, Reset, Cancel”
  • Apply keeps the crop. Pressing Return / Enter, or R again, does the same.
  • Cancel drops your changes and keeps the crop you had before.
  • Reset sets Straighten back to 0 and puts the rectangle back in its default place for the selected aspect ratio.

Nothing changes until you click Apply, even if you click outside the editor.

Changing the crop later

Section titled “Changing the crop later”

Click Crop or press R again. Your crop comes back, ready to change. To remove it, set Aspect to Free, drag the handles out to the edges, and click Apply.

Tips

Section titled “Tips”
  • Straighten first, then crop tightly.
  • A TIFF or JPEG is saved at the size of the crop. A DNG keeps the full frame and stores the crop as a setting you can change later.

See also

Section titled “See also”