Selection
Selecting the area you want
Place the mouse pointer inside the selection area and Drag with the left mouse button pressed to move the selection area. Holding down the CTRL key restricts movement to the vertical plane only, while holding down the ALT key restricts movement to the horizontal plane only.
To resize the selected area point at the sides, top, bottom or corners of the selection box then click and Drag. (Actually within 10% of the the frame). Selecting the sides behaves differently from selecting the corners - Drag one of the corners and the opposite corner remains fixed. Dragging one of the sides keeps the opposite side fixed and varies the other three sides in the correct aspect ratio.
Double-click to reset the selection area.
Alternatively, Drag from anywhere on screen with the right mouse button pressed to zoom the selected area.
The black (or coloured) border area around the image may be included. Certain combinations of aspect ratios with large safe areas may not give as much border as you would wish, so the border can be enlarged if necessary.
Changing the Style of the Selection Box
Sometimes it can be hard to see the bounding box so from the 'More Options' menu it is possible to choose between a dotted line and a solid line of 1,2 or 3 pixels thickness.
Aspect Ratio
Select from this pick-list the desired aspect ratio. For TV there are, of course, 4:3 and 16:9. There is also a selection of standard photo print sizes including A4 (Note A4 is the same aspect ratio as A5, A3 etc).
'As Image' means the aspect ratio is set to the same as the image when it is loaded. The actual ratio is shown. This is useful for cropping a batch of various shapes and keeping them as is.
There is also a 'Custom' option. Enter width and height eg 1.6 and 1, 1024 and 576, 10 and 12. The scaling is not important, just the ratio.
Unlocking the Aspect Ratio
The whole point of this program is maintain a fixed aspect ratio. However, it is possible to unlock the aspect ratio and mark out any selection area. You might want to crop say a small square image, save and reload it, then place it within in a 16:9 frame. On the Aspect Ratio drop-down list is an 'Unlock' option. Or, at any time, hold down SHIFT whilst dragging with the left mouse button pressed over one of the sides to alter the width or height independently. Any change without Shift pressed will cause the aspect ratio to be restored. Then save the image but make sure the Resize option is not checked. See also Reload Last Saved image.
Landscape / Portrait
Although produced primarily to crop landscape images for TV, the portrait mode allows cropping to produce a portrait print, for example. In this case you would not normally want to resize. Note the resizing presets are all landscape, don't mix a portrait selection with a landscape output.
Show Safe Area
Safe Area Size
Due to the fact that most TV's over-scan, some parts of the image near the edges may not be seen. The 'Show Safe Area' option displays an extra selection frame as guide to placing your selection rectangle. By default this is 90% of the true selected area. The safe area size can be varied in 5% steps from 75% to 95%.
For widescreen TV's the over-scan is meant to be no more than 3.5%, but it's not an exact science.
Fit Selection to Safe Area
With this option selected, when a new image is loaded the selected area will default to fitting the safe area.
Fit Selection to Height
With this option selected, when a new image is loaded the selected area will default to fitting the height of the image. Otherwise it defaults to fitting the image width.
Auto Fit Height / Width
(Options Menu only) Useful when operating in batch mode. The default selection will be to the width on a landscape image and to height on a portrait or square image.
Reset Default Selection
Simply resets the selection bounding box back to the default, same as when a new image is loaded.
Status Bar
Image Size: The size of the original image in pixels.
Selection: The size of the selection bounding box in pixels.
Output Folder: The folder which will be used for Save operations. Set using 'Save As...'
