Cropping Software/ Freeware

[urbecrisch]

Looking for a good (and free) image cropping program.  Anyone have any links?

[Teebor]

GIMP

http://gimp.org/downloads/

Thats the program btw

Its free, been a while since I used it but you should find it pretty functional.  Might have to take a look at what it can do since I last used it actually

[urbecrisch]

Thanks for the link.  I've used Gimp, however; I'm looking for a cropping program which has a boundary tracer for fast, accurate cropping which I haven't found on Gimp.  I have been using a trial version of Photo Crop Editor, but it leaves a watermark on the photo unless I shell out the $30 for a registered version.  Just thought there would be another program out there that does the same thing as PCE.  Any other suggestions?

[MaximRecoil]

I've used Irfanview for the past 7 years or so for cropping, since it is tiny (about 1 MB) and loads instantly. It has quality Lanczos resizing filters, can do batch file conversions, rotations, extract GIF animations to individual frames, can take screenshots with a hotkey that saves directly to a file, can open and convert to nearly any image format under the sun, among other things. Cropping is done quickly by dragging an outline for the crop area with your mouse and pressing Ctrl+Y.

Edit:

I'm looking for a cropping program which has a boundary tracer for fast, accurate cropping which I haven't found on Gimp.

No automatic boundary tracer in Irfanview that I know of. I use Photoshop if I need that (obviously not freeware).

[Neverending Project]

Mac OS Leopard ships with some decent alpha masking and cropping tools built right into Preview, their image/PDF viewing app. If you want, send me the file and I will take a look at it an see if Preview can do any good for you (unless you have access to a mac with Leopard).

[urbecrisch]

No automatic boundary tracer in Irfanview that I know of. I use Photoshop if I need that (obviously not freeware).

How do you use boundary tracer cropping in PS?  I have a trial version of CS2.  Thanks.

[SavannahLion]

Thanks for the link.  I've used Gimp, however; I'm looking for a cropping program which has a boundary tracer for fast, accurate cropping which I haven't found on Gimp.

A boundary tracer is that little box that forms when you select the area to crop right? Gimp doesn't have a boundry tracer? I thought it did.

[urbecrisch]

With the trial version of Photo Crop Editor, it's called a boundary tracer and it makes it extremely easy to crop the outline if the image and any other shapes that are in the image.  Just wish there was a free program out there that had this feature.  Maybe I'll end up just forkin' out the $30.  Just hard to justify that amount when I won't be using it that often.  Keep the suggestions rolling in...

[Level42]

Neverending project: I've read about but haven't tried it yet. Upgraded to Leopard about two weeks ago with 0 problems and an amazing faster responding Mac Mini now

For the PC I used this free program:
http://www.photofiltre.com/

Very powerful yet small and easy to work with. Not sure if it does the cropping thing, but I guess it does.
I also used it a lot to automatically re-size a range of pictures for webpublishing, but of course, I have iWeb and iPhoto for this now (and don't have to worry about it )

[Game-boi]

What OS? Newer windows OSes, maybe Paint.NET?

http://www.getpaint.net/

[jwb]

Try this one.

http://ekot.dk/programmer/JPEGCrops/

[urbecrisch]

http://www.getpaint.net/

That program did the trick.  Perfect!  Thanks a lot game-boi!

[MaximRecoil]

No automatic boundary tracer in Irfanview that I know of. I use Photoshop if I need that (obviously not freeware).

How do you use boundary tracer cropping in PS?  I have a trial version of CS2.  Thanks.

If the "boundary tracer" is what I think it is then in Photoshop it is called "Magic Wand Tool". Like, say you had a solid black square on a white background. If you clicked the square with the Magic Wand Tool" then it will automatically put a "marching ants" outline around the black box, by automatically recognizing the boundary between the white and black. It makes it easy to separate a main object from its background, though it isn't a cropping tool in and of itself.

If by "boundary tracer" you mean something different, then I don't know what to tell you. Nearly any image editing program (aside from MS Paint) will have a cropping tool where you can just drag a rectangular outline around the area you want to keep and then hit enter or whatever to crop it down to the size of the boundary you made. Like I said earlier, I use Irfanview for that sort of cropping (even though Photoshop can do it as well) because it is so small and opens instantly, as fast as opening something like Notepad. Plus you don't have to actually select a cropping tool in Irfanview, you just click and drag your mouse pointer on the image and it creates the boundary. Ctrl+Y completes the crop.

[urbecrisch]

You're right maxim, the boundary tracer on the cropping software is the magic wand on other programs.  The getpaint program is good cause it's free.  I'm only using the trial of Photoshop so it will be gone soon