Cropping multiple pictures in a single project in photoshop

Question

I always encounter a problem while trying to export a bunch of pictures after cropping them and thereafter using the adobe generator .

Lets assume I have two pictures of the famous youtuber MKBHD. Both are of different dimensions initially. Now I create a canvas of 1280x1920 and place both the pictures in the same document ( i.e. as two separate layers). Photoshop accordingly resizes them to fit the canvas.

Now, the day is a bit slow and I have nothing much to do, so I jus grab the crop tool and play with the 1st pic above. Here is what if did before confirming the changes :

Now, I just press enter and hide the cropped layer only to find :

It seems as if the canvas has been cropped too and the 2nd picture has to be resized just to see it completely, but I don't want that to happen .

Can anyone explain why are my canvas as well as my 2nd image affected by the crop tool when I just intended to use it on the 1st pic only ?

Answer 1

That's just not how Photoshop works.

The crop tool works on the canvas / artboard, not on the layer. So it will crop all layers in a document, regardless of the stack order or visibility status of the layers.

Imagine you have a stack of papers, and you cut through them with a knife; each sheet of paper behaves as a layer on Photoshop, and the stack is your PSD file. So you need to align the papers correctly if you want to cut through all of them at once.

If you want all your images cropped correctly you should align each layer to the same position (horizontally and vertically) and then crop the file. The easiest way is to align all layers (the part you want visible) to the center.

Answer 2

In addition to Luciano's answer. If you first uncheck "Delete Cropped Pixels", once you've done your crop, you still have the area outside, just hidden. You can then drag the other layer into frame.