Pixel-precise crop in Lightroom

You may have noticed that if you want to crop your photo to a specific pixel size, Lightroom doesn’t really let you do that, or at least it doesn’t make it easy. And if like me you’ve asked around, you’ve likely had people tell you all the reasons why you shouldn’t do that, or even want to do that. Well, we all have our reasons, and if you want to, you should be able to, and I’ve worked out a method that works for me. It requires a bit of play with numbers, but fortunately Lightroom will take care of the actual math. And this’ll save you having to temporarily open a copy in Photoshop to do it the clunky way.

I’ve tested it with a variety of image resolutions and aspect ratios, and so far it seems to hold water. Spot any glaring errors, or got any ideas for improvements? I’d appreciate your feedback.

Note: The version I’ve tested on is Adobe Lightroom Classic v. 10.1

Step 1:

In the Develop module, Open the Crop overlay (press R)

Step 2

Select “Enter Custom…” and type in the pixel count of the shortest edge of your crop, and the longest edge of the image.

In my case, I want an 1200 by 1800 pixel crop from a 4928 by 3264 pixel photo. I enter 1200 in the first box, and 4928 in the other.

This gives me a crop selection which is 1200 pixels tall and 4928 pixels wide.

Step 3

Select your aspect ratio (or enter a custom ratio if it’s not in the list).

In my case I want 2 x 3, which corresponds to 1200 by 1800.

Step 4

Flip the crop overlay if needed (press X), then move it so that it covers the part of the image that you want.

Well, I wanted the tall kind, so I flipped it.

Step 5

Press “Done”, and you’re done!

And that’s all there is to it, really.

Short version:

1. In the Develop module, open the Crop overlay (press “R”)
2. Select “Enter Custom…” and type in the pixel count of the shortest edge of your crop, and the longest edge of the image.
3. Select your aspect ratio (or enter a custom ratio if it’s not in the list).
4. Flip the crop overlay if needed (X), then move the crop overlay so that it covers the part of the image that you want.
5. Press Done.

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