Photo cropping or image cropping is applied to re-size the image to fit it inside the frame properly. Frame can be material or virtual.
Suppose you are using your product image on Amazon you have to provide the image according to certain requirement like it should be at least 1050 pixel height and the padding should not be more than 15 percent of the main image. In this case you must apply image cropping to optimize your image according to their requirements. Such professional website also specifies the background color. Most of the e-commerce websites prefer pure white background. In order to make the background pure white you need to remove background first that will enable you to apply any background as per your wish. You can easily accomplish both photo cropping and background removal task by applying some techniques.
Create Clipping Path First: The first step of cropping your image is to create clipping path. You may also crop your image without clipping path but in order to get the best quality you should make the outer selection by image clipping. Clipping path will serve you two important advantages at a time: 1. Remove background 2. Accurate photo cropping
Remove Background: Once clipping path is done you can remove background very easily. Make selection of clipping path by holding Ctrl or Command and clicking on path layer. Now apply 0.3 to 0.5 pixel feather and cut out (hold Ctrl or Command + J) the image from the existing background. It will cut out the object in a transparent layer that will allow you to use any background behind the object.
Close Cropping: After creating Photoshop clipping path you have crop the image up to the edge of the object. Follow the below steps to do close photo cropping:
Ctrl + click on path layer(windows)/ Command + click on path layer(Mac)
Go to Image → Crop (see the below screenshot)
Adjust Ratio: Now you have to adjust width/height ratio of the image. Go to image size first(Alt + Ctrl + I) and the put the value you want the product size to be. Suppose if you want to make the image 1200 x 1200 pixels with 5% padding on the longest side of the product you have to put 1000 pixels value on the longest side(either width or height). Then go to canvas size (Alt + Ctrl + C) and put 1200 x 1200 pixels(width & height). You are done with your image cropping project.
Use of Photo Cropping & Background Removal: Image cropping is one of the key techniques of web image optimization. If you want to ensure the best performance of your images you have to do proper photo cropping before using on web. There is no alternative of cropping your image if you are using those on e-commerce website like Amazon, Alibaba, OLX etc. All of these top charted e-commerce website also require neat and clean background.
You can easily optimize your image by following the tutorial. It will enable you to remove background and to crop your image according to the requirement of the e-commerce website you are going to use for your business. If you have too many images and you are feeling it a burden to optimize all the images by yourself, you may accept our assistance to handle your image optimization project.