CropAI. I have to admit I’m not sure I’m ready to let some artificial intelligence algorithm decide how I want my images to be cropped. But let’s see how it works, and whether it achieves my vision.
CropAI for social media and more
You might want to start out with the Crop tool to see what your options are before you click on that CropAI button. Here you can enter your own custom ratio depending on what you need. The standard crop sizes are just a click away as well.
The Facebook feed and cover options are nice so you don’t have to remember what the ratio is they prefer.
Close but not close enough
The image on the left is the original with no crop. The image on the right is what CropAI chose.
While I like where it put the frog in the frame, it just didn’t finish off the image. For me personally, it’s all about paying attention to the entire image, not just the subject. In this case, that dark bit on the left of the frame is distracting. CropAI did not pay enough attention to what is in the frame in my opinion. The image below is how I chose to crop it myself.
Getting closer with CropAI
It may depend on the scene you are trying to crop as to how well it does. Here is another example where CropAI came sort of close, but still not how I would leave this image.
CropAI left things poking in on the left of the frame, it looks messy and it’s distracting. It also cut off the bottom of the tree so it’s sort of weirdly just in the frame with no real anchor to it. It doesn’t feel right to see it that way.
Below are the areas I would crop out while leaving the length of the tree in the frame. It just doesn’t work otherwise.
I’ll keep control of my cropping, thank you
Personally, I think the tool is good for beginners, helping them improve their compositions. It uses things like the rule of thirds and other compositional rules to crop.
Mostly, the use of the CropAI tool will depend on who is using it and how well-versed they are in composition, how they like their images to look and their particular practice of cropping.
For me, while I may be a self-admitted control freak, when it comes to my images and how I want them to look, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. CropAI will have to do a whole lot better to win me over and that will not be easy.
I’m still warming up to the crop tool in Neo. I have been using scale for so long in Photoshop ACR, it will take some doing to break me of that habit. I like scale in ACR because I don’t lose the original image size. Makes sending images to the print shop much easier for me. Yes, I am lazy that way.
It’s not lazy if that’s what works for you. I tend not to crop a whole lot in the first place and would rather have full control over it when I do decide to crop an image.