Try Cinematic Cropping for a Wide-Screen Look

Last year, I came up with a style of cropping photos that kind of approximates what a wide-screen movie looks like onscreen (which is why I call it “cinematic cropping”). It really gives your image that wide-screen, almost panoramic look, and I find myself using it more and more. Luckily, it’s easy to crop like this in either Photoshop, Camera Raw, or Lightroom. We’ll start with Photoshop. Step One: Click on the Crop tool, then up in the Options Bar, in the Width and Height fields, for Width, enter 2.39, and for Height, enter 1. That’s it. Now when you drag out the Crop tool over your image, it will be constrained to those cinematic crop proportions. In Camera Raw, just click on the Crop tool and, from the pop-up menu that appears, choose ....