While I was entering the amount to crop off of a particular side I began to wonder what a negative number would do.
Would the program “flip out” and require me to change them? Would it turn them into zeros? Maybe I’d even get something new and interesting!
So, naturally I began to play and found that negative numbers do work.
What they actually do is add a white space border to the picture on the side with the negative cropping value.
It’s the effect you’ll get if you try to crop a picture and pull the cropping handle outward instead of in… did you know that you could do that?
Basically, what happens is that the actual image is not changed, nothing is cut off or even resized. Instead the outside border of the picture moves out from the image itself.
Why would we do that?
Well, one of the first things that came to my mind had to do with text wrapping. If you’ve got text wrapped around the picture but it still looks like it’s too close to the image then you could use this process of “reversed cropping” to add some extra edge to the picture. This would force the text away a bit without adjusting wrapping or using some other more complex process.
Just one more trick to add to your list for that “Ah-Ha” moment when you find yourself faced with situation where this one can erase all your spacing frustrations.
~ April
