Photoshop Crop Tool

Photoshop - Crop Tool - C

Use the crop tool in Photoshop to crop down an image. Trim away portions of a photo that you may not particularly like and focus on the section of the image that you want to highlight. Select the crop tool from the Tool Bar by pressing C.

Crop Tool - C:

Drag a selection with the crop tool just as you would the marquee tools. Use the space bar and shift keys to drag and shape the rectangle about the canvas. Once you have a selection you are happy with, press enter to crop the rest of the picture away.

Crop Away!:

Photoshop - Crop Tool Options Bar

The arrow by the icon for the crop tool drops down into a list of common picture sizes. Use these if you plan on printing the image and framing it in a standard frame.

Crop Tool Presets:

While these presets offer a precise means to crop an image down to the desired size. This tool does not solve the problem of reducing the size of an entire image. Photoshop does have a solution to this problem, you may change the entire size of an image by clicking on the Image menu at the top of the screen and selecting the Image Size... option.
Use the vacant input boxes as a means to specify your own dimensions and resolution. Resolution has to do with the quality of the image, set a higher resolution to increase picture quality. Be aware that increasing a resolution of an image also increases the file size of that image - not so super for web developers.

Crop Tool Option Bar:

Photoshop - Crop Tool Second Options bar

After dragging and dropping a crop. Before pressing enter to confirm the cropping, another options bar appears at the top of the screen.

More Crop Tool Options:

Photoshop - Crop Tool Mouse Work

Rotate the cropping by clicking behind one of the points and swinging your mouse about the canvas. Clicking on a point will allow you to additionally modify the size of the cropping.

Mouse Work:

Rotating the cropping as we've done above skewed the sphere creating more of a three dimensional oval - egg shape.