Photo How To

This image-editing tutorial from the PHLEARN YouTube channel does double duty by first demonstrating how to crop an image to any aspect ratio, and then follows up by explaining the simple process of expanding the result with AI. It's a useful technique that anyone can accomplish with ease.

Instructor Aaron Nace is a highly acclaimed photographer, digital artist, and Photoshop expert whose ongoing tutorials leverage his decade of post-processing experience, revealing both mistakes to avoid and straightforward techniques for embellishing your work. What you'll learn in this episode is important for every photographer to understand.

Nace begins with cropping and demonstrates how to create the perfect aspect ratio to meet the specifications of various social media platforms or printing images to a specific size like 4x6, 5x7 or any custom dimension that's required. There are two ways two access Photoshop's standard Crop tool—either by hitting the letter "C" on the keyboard or by clicking the appropriate icon at the top left of corner of your workspace.

As you'll see, there are a few options that Nace recommends. The first has to do with a box atop the screen that's labeled "Delete Cropped Pixels" and he suggests leaving this default unchecked for reasons he explains. Just to the right there's another option designated "Generative Expand," and for today's task it's important to keep that one enabled.

You'll also see a Ratio tab at the top left of the screen that brings up a dropdown menu with predefined aspect ratios from which to select—like 1:1 which provides a square crop that's helpful when posting images to Instagram. You can also manually specify whatever custom crop you want.

But here's "the cool thing," according to Nace. "Because we have AI we can actually expand a cropped image when the Delete Cropped Pixels option is disabled." Thus, you can either grab the corner of the image or pull out the handles on the top, bottom or sides to extend shot.

There's a bit more to it than this, and Nace provides all the essential details for refining the aspect ratio to perfection. It's a fast and simple process that's extremely helpful in a variety of ways.

Once the video concludes head over to the PHLEARN YouTube channel where there's much more to learn about using Photoshop to meet your specific needs.

We also recommend watching another post-processing primer that we featured with another expert who explains the difference between the SRGB and Adobe RGB Color Space settings, how they work, and when it's best to use one choice versus the other.