Oh god it's a technical difficulties thread...

So I got a new computer in the Summer and it's the shit. At first it was hard to get used to all the changes from XP to 7. But now there's pretty much only one thing I still haven't got down...cropping a picture the way I used to. I know that things change and everything but the program I used to use on my old computer called Microsoft Office Picture Manager allowed me to crop by pixels/lines of pixels (sorry graphic design people and others in the know, I don't know the proper terms). Here is the program that I used and on the right is the feature I miss so dearly.



As you could see I could actually crop the lines and stuff.

And now in Windows 7's program called Windows Live Photo Gallery, I can't find a way to crop by "lines of pixels" (sorry again for my ignorance). This is what things look like when you open a picture and click the option for cropping.



When I click custom, I don't get a feature that lets me crop by "lines of pixels" as I would before. A square shows up on the picture that I can drag. It works, but it isn't precise and I don't know if I am making a perfect square for instance, which would be useful if I were cropping an album cover for instance which I often do. Or if I want to make a picture have a certain length to width ratio, I can't just drag this bullshit around and do everything using an approximation trial and error method. Here's a look at this new means of cropping.



I'm open to trying a new program as log as it's free and safe. Thanks for reading, I hope to learn from you guys.

Gimp it up!

http://www.gimp.org/

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fredde's right! I think GIMP has exactly what you're looking for. I'll walk you through cropping with it (I'm using GIMP 2.6 however, not 2.8).

First, click on the crop tool in the toolbox.



Then click and drag the approximate area you want to crop. You can see the dimensions of your selection at the bottom of the window. I also highlighted the aspect ratio option in the crop box, which might be useful.



Now, you can use the options in the crop box to adjust the size and position of the selection by pixels, inches, or whatever you want. There are also guidelines you can use in order to help you align it correctly.



Hit enter, and the image will crop to your selection!

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... & if Gimp seems to technical for you, I know I struggle with it!

Then Paint.Net is a very user friendly option also... Think MS Paint with lots of extras.

Good Luck

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Khalpz, Adobe's offering the legacy version of Photoshop CS2 for free:

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.html

Download it and use it.

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