Cropping Your Pictures with the Rule of Thirds
Saturday, February 27th, 2010Let me start off by saying, I am no photographer by any means. I did have to take a photography course in college though, and I do remember my professor saying some useful stuff. Some of it still sits in the back of my head and occasionally I think to myself: “You know your picture would be better if you would just do this… or that…” but then reality jumps in, and I am hurrying trying to capture a moment in my crazy 3 year olds life and all I can do is just try and push the shutter button, hoping that he will stay still long enough to get a shot that is in focus. (And that’s just with a point and shoot camera- I can’t imagine trying to use an SLR!!)
Fortunately, unlike my college days where we were shooting with slide film- we have a huge advantage with our digital cameras. I may not be able to take an amazing shot straight out of my camera- but with the help of some post editing, I can turn my photo into one.
One of the greatest “tricks” of digital editing is how easy it is to crop your picture. Some of you might have heard of the rule of thirds- today I am going to show you how to use it to help your pictures pop.
The basic idea behind the rule of thirds is if you were take your picture and divide it into thirds both horizontally and vertically, then place points of interest where those lines intersect, your photo becomes more balanced and pleasing to the eye.

Ideally it would be great if you could have this rule in mind when actually shooting your photographs, but as I illustrated above, that is not always possible. Enter your cropping tool.

Here I have a picture of my son – it’s not a bad picture, but his head is just almost in the exact center of the photo, which doesn’t make it very interesting. To help you with your rule of third cropping I am including a grid (.png) that you can download to help play around with on your photos.
Click HERE to download.
To start I open the grid and drag it into my photo.

Now I think this picture would work better horizontally so I am going to rotate my grid 90 degrees. Then I am going to play with moving it around- and resizing it until I can get my point of interest in the photo (my son’s face) to be in one of those intersecting points (or near as I can get it). Don’t worry about keeping the proportions of the grid the same as you re-size it, even if you widen it, it will still keep those lines dividing it in thirds. Finally this is what I come up with.

Now all I have to do is select my crop tool and crop along the outside box of my grid. Once I have cropped my picture I can delete the grid layer. And here I have a picture that is much more interesting.

And here is the layout I did for the Tuesday Template challenge using Storytime by Designs by Sarah Bennett, Lil’ Digi Bits by Jude, and Stacey’s Backdoor Designs.

Here’s what QuiltyMom created using Dandelion Wishes, Mask-querade, My Heart Soars & Newspaper Clippings alpha by Jennifer Barrette


And this last one is by Julie Momof4- she used : Dood by- Simply.Scraps, Fill in the Blank by- Erika Zane, Simply Dated by- WM [Squared] Designs, Cool Kid Alpha by- Jennifer Barrette, Just a Little Punchy Template by- Sya’s Blueprints.
Your challenge is to create a page where you crop your picture(s) using the rule of thirds.
Remember:
*You will receive one point for completing this challenge and posting your finished layout in both the challenge gallery AND in the challenge thread.
*You will receive one EXTRA point if you use a new release product within the week of its release. (Be sure to note that you used a new release when you post your layout in the forum and in the gallery.)
*Because this challenge is during the last week of the month you have until the end of March to complete your page. (If you complete it in Feb. you will receive your point in Feb.)
I can’t wait to see your awesome cropped pictures!


) and use it in a LO. There are plenty of free avatar making sites out there. I have a few suggestions, but please feel free to use and share other sites!
















See how easy that was? Always remember you can edit elements by changing the size, color, shape, etc.
































































