Photoshop Cropping - edge of image based on center selection

Question

I do bulk editing and would like to be able to record and automate a set of instructions that accomplish the following.

Say I have an image of an apple. The apple is off center - ie, the background is grey, and the image is slightly off center to the bottom right.

I would like to be able to select, using the rectangular select tool, the apple. Then I would like to be able to expand this select to the maximum dimensions it can fit within the image while keeping the apple right in the center. then I would like to crop the image as such.

What this means is, since the apple is slightly to the bottom right, the resulting image would reach the bottom and right boundaries first and accordingly crop off some portion of the top and left.

If using the select tool is not right, any other method is fine. But right now I have to manually crop and with every image manually adjust it which adds time. I would like the only manual work to be creating the select box around the subject matter.

Answer 1

If all your images have the same kind of alignment then the process can simply be changed by adding one extra step.

Instead of focusing on cropping something that is off-center, and since Photoshop doesn't really have an intelligent AI for this, you should simply center the image first by increasing the size of the canvas THEN using the "canvas size" or crop to get your image centered and cropped to the size you want.

So find how much mm or inches you need to add to the left/right/top/bottom to make that apple centered, then do your crop or canvas size.

You can record your action once you've found the correct measurements and apply this to a batch process.

It does work, that's a method I used myself many times with actions and batch processing.

If all your images are placed in different positions then this won't work and I don't think there's any other way than the manual way in this case.

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I would like the only manual work to be creating the select box around the subject matter.

If your big issue is doing the crop action, create a shortcut for it or even create an action to simply copy/paste that selection in a new canvas with the right size; it should automatically center it.

Answer 2

Try using Image > Crop after you've made your selection.

You could also assign the Crop command to a keyboard shortcut to fire it off with just one key. (Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Image > Crop).