To Crop or Not to Crop: Photo Cropping for Scrapbookers

Crop Out Distractions: We are seeing less and less of cropping pictures into a myriad of shapes to fill our scrapbook pages. Not everything need be, or should be, a circle, oval, hexagon, etc. When you look at the layouts that make the covers of today's most popular scrapbooking periodicals, you will see that the photos are amazing, capturing the feelings of the moments in beautiful focused color. If you are not the ace photographer that you hope to be someday, or if you have children who have the tendency to move at just the wrong moment making the perfect photo hard to capture, use selective photo cropping to make your pictures even better.

In the sample shown here, the picture was an average shot. As you look at the photo, you are distracted by clutter off to the right that is not important to the picture. With just a small amount of cropping, the balance and focus of the photo is enhanced. Selective cropping allows your eye to be drawn to the special moment being captured on film and not distracted by unbalanced background elements.