In this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to look at how to add more visual interest to our photos by cropping them using a simple, tried and true design trick known as the Rule of Thirds. Don't worry, no prior design knowledge is necessary. The great thing about it is, not only is it something that any photographer can benefit from, amateur or professional, but once you've been introduced to it as we're about to do here, your photos will forever look better.

One of the tell-tale signs of an amateur photo or "tourist snapshot" is that the subject of the photo is smack dab in the center of the frame, as if the photographer was aiming at his or her subject not through the lens of a camera but through the scope of a rifle. An easy way to add more interest to your photos and make them look more professional is to position your subjects using what's known as the Rule of Thirds. If you've never heard of the Rule of Thirds, it's quite simple. For every three photos you take, you throw away the first two and keep only the third one, because the third one always looks the best.

Still reading? Good, because I'm joking. Hopefully you haven't deleted too many photos yet. The real idea behind the Rule of Thirds is to imagine that your photo is divided up into a grid of three equal rows and three equal columns, and the "rule" (think of it more as a guideline than a rule) is that your photo will look more interesting to people if the subject in the photo is positioned at one of the four points where these grid lines intersect. It's a very basic idea, and yet it works remarkably well, as we're about to see.

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Things To Consider...
A couple of things to keep in mind though before we continue. First, it helps a lot if you already had the Rule of Thirds in mind when you took the photo, since then we'd have a better chance of being able to position the subject into one of these imaginary intersecting grid points. If the subject is taking up too much space in the image, there may not be enough room left around the subject to move it to a different position if it wasn't planned out ahead of time.

Also, since we're going to be cropping the images, we'll be creating smaller versions than the originals. The number of pixels in your image, which is determined by the megapixel (MP) value of your camera, will determine the maximum size you'll be able to crop to, but it will always be smaller than what we started out with.

For this tutorial, I'm going to take one of my photos, captured using an 8MP camera, and crop it down to a standard size 4x6 using the Rule of Thirds to make it more interesting. Keeping with standard photo sizes, I could probably go as large as a 5x7 with my 8MP images, but unless I had already positioned the subject close to one of those imaginary intersecting grid points when I snapped the photo, which in this case I didn't, it's doubtful that I would have enough wiggle room left in the image to crop to an 8x10, at least not without sacrificing image quality.

Okay, that's enough talking. Let's get things started. Here's the photo I'm going to be using in this tutorial:

As it is, it's not a bad photo. After all, it's hard to take a bad photo of a butterfly resting on a flower. However, it does sort of have that "I'm about to shoot you with my sniper rifle" look to it, and I think I could make this photo more interesting if I reposition the butterfly using the Rule of Thirds.

Before we go any further, let's see exactly what we mean by this Rule of Thirds.

Here's the same photo again, but this time, I've added the grid lines that I've been talking about. They're the horizontal and vertical yellow lines dividing the image up into 3 equally sized rows and columns:

The points where these grid lines intersect have been circled in red. According to the rule of thirds, our image will look more interesting if the subject, which in this case is the butterfly, is positioned at or near one of these points, which at the moment it isn't. We're going to fix that.

As I stated on the previous page, since we're cropping images here, we'll be making smaller versions than the originals, and in this case, I want to turn my photo into a more interesting 4x6. Since I know exactly what size I want my final photo to be, the easiest thing to do is to create a new document at exactly that size. I'll assume from this moment on that you also want a 4x6, but if you're after a different size, any time you see me type "4x6", simply replace it with your own photo dimensions.

Step 1: Create A New 4x6 Document In Photoshop

Since I know I'm going to want a 4x6 when I'm done, I'm going to create a new blank 4x6 document in Photoshop by going up to the File Menu at the top of the screen and choosing New..., which brings up the New Document dialog box.

I want my photo to use landscape orientation, meaning the width is longer than the height, so I'll enter 6 inches for the width and 4 inches for the height. I also want to make sure my photo prints nice and sharp, so I'll enter 300 pixels per inch for the resolution value. I've also named my document "Rule of Thirds 4x6", but you don't have to name yours if you don't want to. When you're done entering the values, click OK and Photoshop will create your new blank document for you.

Step 2: Drag The Photo Into The New Document

Now that I have both my original photo and the new document open on my screen, I'm going to grab my Move tool either from the Tools palette or by pressing "M" on my keyboard, and then I'm going to click anywhere inside my photo and drag it with my mouse into the new document:

And here's what my new document now looks like after I dragged my photo into it. Since my original photo was considerably larger than a 4x6, the sides of the photo extend out beyond the dimensions of the document, but that's fine for now. All we need for the moment is for the photo to be inside the 4x6 document:

I don't need to have my original photo open anymore, and you don't either, so go ahead and close it, leaving only the new document open.

Before we go moving or resizing our photo inside the new document, we need our Rule of Thirds grid lines. Creating the grid lines in Photoshop is incredibly easy, but it's also a little time consuming and even worse, boring, and Easy + Time Consuming + Boring has "Create an action!" written all over it, which is what we're going to do next.