PhiMatrix™ Tutorials:  Lesson 4 - Cropping a photo for better layout

This lesson illustrates how PhiMatrix can be used to crop a photo to use phi-based proportions to give a better sense of balance and composition.

Start with the original photo sailboat.jpg that was included with the program:

Click on the Border Size control and reduce it to zero so that your final photo will be the same size as the grid.

Adjust the grid to the size you want by clicking and dragging.  It's easier to get exact sizes if you drag the horizontal and vertical sides separately.  In this case, a 480x360 application window size was used.

Click on the horizontal and vertical line counters to add lines to highlight key elements of the photo.  In this case, four horizontal lines were selected by setting H Lines to 3 and H Axis to Both to mirror the top and bottom.  Three vertical lines were used by setting V Lines to 3 and V Axis to Left.

Move the grid up and down to align the grid lines with the key elements of the photo.  In this case, the horizontal phi lines were aligned with the horizon of the sky, the deck of the boat and the tops of the small sail and forward mast.  The vertical phi lines were aligned with the main mast of the sail and the front and back of the boat.

Eliminate the grid lines from your photo by setting Line Width to zero.

Click on the snapshot icon (Camera) to save your cropped photo in an image format of your choice.

Note how the cropped photo looks in comparison to the original photo above and how it gives a much better sense of balance and composition:

Before - Original	After - Balanced & Cropped

To use PhiMatrix to crop an image to a standard photo size, do the following.  If using PhiMatrix Professional Edition, do the following:

• Set the Aspect to the desired photo size, e.g., 5"x7" for this example.
• Set the Orientation to Landscape.
• Set the H Lines and V Lines to the number of lines needed to position key elements of the photo according to phi or golden section proportions.
• Click and drag on the lower right hand corner of the grid to adjust to the desired grid size.
• Position the grid over the photo so that the key elements of the photo fall on the grid lines.
• Set the Line Width to zero to eliminate the grid lines from the photo.
• Click on the snapshot icon (Camera) to save your cropped photo in an image format of your choice.

If using PhiMatrix Standard edition you can still do this with some simple calculations.

• Set the Border Width control to 0 pixels.
• Set the H Lines and V Lines to the number of lines needed to position key elements of the photo according to phi or golden section proportions.
• Drag the top or bottom of PhiMatrix to set the height that you want for the cropped area.
• Multiply the value of the V Height control in the tool bar by 5 and divide by 7 to calculate the Width.
• Drag the side of PhiMatrix until the the H Width value in the tool bar displays the calculated Width.
• Move the entire PhiMatrix window to position it to the desired place on the underlying image.
• Set the Line Width to zero (if desired) to eliminate the gridlines from your cropped image.
• Click on the Snapshot button to save the image in 5x7 proportions.
• To print the image in actual 5x7 size, do one of the following:
  -Open the image using Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, click on the print icon (or hit Control-P), and select the 5x7 print option.
  -If using digital photo editing software that allows you to set the image resolution, set the image using the following formula: Pixel width of image divided by desired print width, which is 5 our 5x7 example.   In other words, for a photo that is 600 pixels in width, divide by 5 and set the photo resolution to 120 to print the photo with a 5" width.
• Print the image.