Experimantal

Here is another image from the Maryland wet morning photo-drive. I think I just coined a new photo word. I am leaning towards making all of these images black and white because frankly, they have good composition and contrast, there just is no color in them from the drabness of the day. I was going to do a little dodge and burning on this image but the more I looked at it the more it stood on its own. All I did was a small levels adjustment and build a mild vignette.

The image is in its native crop and I got to thinking how it might look as square or in a 4:3 ratio. There are two layers  layers on the screen capture below labeled 4x1 and 1x1. These were created using the rectangle shape tool and set the constraints as shown in the second screen capture. These automatically go to their separate layers when created.

Now with the original image on the top layer you can go to Layer>Group with Previous to use the layer below to clip the layer above. You can also move your cursor over the line dividing the two layers while holding down the Option key noting the cursor turns to what I call the Ying-Yang scrubber and click.

Below is the rectangle options panel. I used proportional as I was not concerned with the final output size. Experiment with the other options id you like.

In the image below you can see where the original image is clipped to the 4x3 mask. What is nice about this it that up until now it is non-destructive. You can move the 4x3 layer around as well as transform its size.

Once you are satisfied with how the "soft crop" looks you can go ahead and commit to a final crop that removes data. It is time like that when I really enjoy lightroom.

I think that will do it for today. Check back tomorrow to see if I am still here.

Cya... Doug