Cropping and Straightening Photos

In this video, we’re going to look at how it can straighten and crop photos and videos in the Photos app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s first look at how we can straighten our photos and videos. I’m going to swipe up and I have this album here Straighten, and I have a photo on here that I want to straighten. I have this photo here, I want to straighten it. We can see the horizon is leaning towards the right. I double click on it, open it up. Now what I need to do is I need to edit it. So I go to the upper right-hand corner and click on Edit. We have our three tools up at the top. This is where we can make our adjustments, which is our color adjustments, we can apply filters, and then we also have crop.

To straighten a photo or a video, what we need to do is go to Crop. So now I click on Crop, and now I can straighten it as well as crop it.

To straighten it, all we have to do is just go over to this little dial here on the right side, and we just drag this up or down. When I do that, watch the horizon. I just drag it up and down, and we can see the horizon is straightening. Now, when you do this, it does zoom in slightly. When you are finished, all you have to do is just click on Done. And now I’ve just straightened that photo.

It works same way with videos. I’m going to go to a video here. Let’s go to my Videos album, and I’m going to go to this video here. I double click on it, and then I click on Edit. This video here is leaning a little bit to the left. So now I just go over to Crop here, and again, we have our dial and all I have to do is just drag this down a little bit until it’s straight. We do have a grid pattern here showing where we can level our horizon. When I’m finished, I just click on Done. And now I’ve just straightened that video.

What about cropping? Cropping works very similar. Let’s go back over to my albums here. I have a few photos here that need to be cropped. So I’m going to click on Crop here. I going to go to this photo here, a double click on it. And what I want to do is I want to crop into this photo. All we have to do is just go up under Edit, and again we go over to our Crop. From here, we just take these little handles here in each corner and drag them to where I want to crop it to.

Another thing I can do is pinch and zoom. So I can drag these to crop it anywhere I want, or what I can do is just pinch and zoom on my track pad. Once I get it to where I want it cropped, I just click on Done. And it’ll crop it.

Now, before we click on Done, what we can do is we can lock the aspect ratio. I don’t know if you noticed, but when I was cropping this by dragging this handle, I could basically change the aspect ratio to anything that I want. So I could cut the dune right out there. Well, if you want to lock the aspect ratio, what you do is go over to the right and you’re going to see we have all of our different aspect ratios. Right now free form is selected. So I can just free form that crop. I want to keep it at a 16×9, so I click on 16×9. And now when I drag this around, it’s going to be locked at a 16×9 aspect ratio.

Let’s say I wanted to make that portrait. All I have to do is just go down to the bottom here and you’re going to see landscape and portrait. Right now the landscape is checked. I click on portrait, and now it’s going to lock at 16×9 portrait. Once I have it cropped where I want, I click on Done. And that photo is now cropped.

Same thing with videos. I’m going to go back over to my Videos album. I select it. And let’s say I wanted to crop into this video here. I double-click on it. We go up to Edit. We go over to Crop. And again, I have my handles here to where I can just free form that crop or I can go over to the right and lock it to an aspect ratio. Once I lock it to an aspect ratio, I can also set if I want it to be landscape or portrait.

So that’s how we straighten and crop our photos and videos in the Photos app on the Mac. All we have to do is just select which photo or video we want to straighten or crop. We click on Edit and then up at the top, we want our cropping tools. If you want to straighten your photo or video, you just drag the little dial to the right of the photo or video, drag it up and down to straighten it. And if you want to crop it, you go to the handles in each corner and drag that handle around. By default, it will be a free form crop, which means you can change the aspect ratio to anything that you want. But if you want to lock it to a specific aspect ratio, you go over to the right and click on the aspect ratio that you want. Once you click on that aspect ratio, you can set if you want it to be landscape or portrait. When you are finished, you just click on Done and you’ve now straightened and cropped your photo or video. And of course you can always revert back to the original. So if you’ve cropped a video, cropped a photo, or even straightened it, and you’re not sure that you like it, you can always revert back to the original and re-crop it and re-straighten it.

So that’s how we straighten and crop our photos and videos in the Photos app on the Mac.