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6. The Tools in the Toolbox / 6.2 Tools for All Kind of Layers

### 6.2.13 The Crop Tool

The Crop tool is used to cut an image or a document to a given size. Usually you first define the size you want to get. Furthermore you can optionally scale the result to that given size.

There are 3 possibly situations:

- The width and the height in the Tool Settings are empty or 0
In this case the result will be the selected area. If Resolution is activated, after cropping the resolution will be set to the value in the Tool Settings.
- The width and the height have a value with the unit "Pixel"
If Scale is activated, the result will be scaled to the given pixel size and the resolution will be set to the given value. Otherwise the result will not be modified.
- The width and height have a value with a physical unit
If Scale is activated, the result will be scaled, so that the selected area along with the specified resolution receives the target size. Otherwise the resolution will only be set.

If all settings are done, you can select the area you want to keep by using a rubber box. Optionally you can turn on guide lines which help you to rate the quality of the image composition.

By clicking Crop or double-clicking inside the selected area cropping is executed. In order to straighten the result, there are several ways to rotate the background:

- by clicking and dragging outside the selection rectangle
- by holding Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS X) and clicking and dragging inside the selection rectangle
- by using Alt+Arrow left and Alt+Arrow right
- on Mac OS X by using the rotate gesture

If your picture is distorted perspectively, you can correct that by clicking and dragging on a corner point while holding the Ctrl key (Windows) or Cmd key (Mac OS X).

The Crop tool is always changing the size of the whole document, while the lasso tool (see chapter 6.3.4) is changing the size of the active layer. If the active layer is the background layer (see chapter 2.10), the result of both tools is similar.

Tip: Typing Tab will switch the given height and width. Landscape will become portrait and vice versa.

Another tip: If you only want to crop with a certain ratio, the unit of the width and height has to be "Pixel" and Scale must be turned off.