Crop Tool

[BrianCatLover]

There doesn't appear to be a Crop tool allowing you to crop out any section of an image to a specific pixel/inch and dpi size of your choosing. I am used to working with Photoshop CS4, 5, 6, Photoshop Elements 10 thru 13, and  Fastone Image Viewer. All offer a crop tool that allows you to reposition the crop dimensions anywhere within the photo. The current Image/Crop to Selection and Resize do not allow you precise placement of your crop boundaries. Is there gong to be a Crop tool added at a future time because this is an essential tool for resize/cropping of  specific areas all at once. This would be a very nice free paint program to offer to do very simple to more complicated photo management but a tool like crop is essential. The whole program looks pretty well thought out and easy to use, just missing a good crop tool.

[Red ochre]

The D.P.I. is changed via the Resize dialogue.
The selection can be made to a fixed ratio or fixed size in pixels, cm or inches and the top left corner co-ordinates of the rectangle are shown.
Then crop to selection.

Plugins are not allowed to change the selection or resolution.
I did make a plugin to help with composition and cropping which may or may not help here.

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/22810-composition-tool/

 

Personally, I find Pdn much easier to use than Photoshop elements and more powerful in some areas too.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Moved to paint.net Discussion & Questions

[Rick Brewster]

No need for a crop tool:

 

1. Rectangle select tool ... draw your initial selection

2. Switch to the Move Selection tool

3. Adjust edges of the selection as much as you need

4. Image -> Crop

5. Repeat as needed

[BrianCatLover]

I tried your suggestion, it worked but was not as intuitive as having a crop tool that allows you to set dpi and inch crop parameters all in one tool. I am trying to find a simple software program that will allow my students who just want to create (example)  a 4x6 @ 300 dpi to use one simple tool like a crop tool showing these parameters. If the picture comes from their camera at 360 dp at 12" x 18", I don't see a single step to crop this larger image down to 300 dpi and 4x6 dimensions. How you have it set up just doesn't feel as easy or accurate  to do this crop as most established software programs. Working with so many commercial software programs, using the same style crop too gets you spoiled. Still have to give you credit for sprucing up this simple paint program that still has the muscle to do a lot of retouch and layers style manipulations. Congratulations for that.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

DPI (dots per inch) are not relevant to the image size when expressed in pixels. 360dpi x 12" is simply another way of saying the image is 360 x 12 = 4320 pixels wide. As Students, they should be able to do the math to work out the dimensions of the cropped area:

300dpi x 4 inches = 1200px
300dpi x 6 inches = 1800px

There is an option to set the rectangle selection tool to a fixed size with units of inches, centimeters or pixels. Set the Fixed Size option in the Tool Bar (with the rectangle select tool active).  Set the units to Pixels and type in the above dimensions. Click on the image and drag to position the selection then his Ctrl + Shift + X to perform the cropping operation.  Easy.