You have already seen how to crop an image with the cropping tool. Now you will learn how to crop an image based on a selection. The drawback to this method is that only rectangular shapes will be cropped. If your selection is an odd shape, like an ellipse or an unusual polygon, the image will be cropped to the smallest rectangle that bounds the shape.

 

To crop an image based on a selection, just make your selection and then choose Image ->Crop from the menu bar. In the following pair of images, you will see a composite rectangular selection (made using the Add to selection button in the options bar) before and after it is cropped.

 

 

Selection before cropping               Image-> Crop                 Selection after cropping

 

Note: To isolate the unusual selection, you could choose Select->Inverse, and then press the Delete key. The rest of the image will be removed, but this is not really the same as cropping. You will notice that the image size in pixels will not be reduced by deleting the inverse selection. (To see the image size, right click on the title bar and choose Image Size from the pop up menu.)