Rule of Thirds and Cropping in Photoshop

Most photographers and artists are familiar with the rule of thirds, however applying it to a crop in Photoshop is easier said than done. The rule is, simply, that a photograph is cut into thirds horizontally and vertically. The intersections of these lines are the “sweet spots” of the canvas. There’s actually a lot of interesting science behind why these are the sweet spots, but that is coming soon in a separate article.

When I compose my shot I try to keep the rule of thirds in mind, but my camera doesn’t have that grid in the viewfinder, so it’s easy to get a bit off. And of course sometimes I shoot like an idiot and my subject is smack dab in the middle of the shot or no attention was paid to composition at all. I have a feeling a lot of people have this problem, so it’s extremely helpful to develop a method in your workflow to easily apply the rule of thirds when cropping your shots.

If you’re not familiar with Shoot and Edit by Ashley and Jill, go add them to your feed reader now and wait for the photography and editing gold to be delivered to you weekly. Last week, Ashley wrote about this famous rule and shared a helpful video tutorial from Digital Heavens showing how to crop a photo in Photoshop according to the rule of thirds. If you don’t want to or can’t watch the video, I’ll explain the method it describes below.

The Method

The key is to apply a grid that is cut into these horizontal and vertical sections. In Photoshop:

1. Go to Edit > Preferences > Guide, Grids, Slices and Count…
2. In the Grid section next to Gridline every: type 33.3, then in the drop-down next to that, select percent.
3. In the Grid section next to Subdivisions: type 1.
4. Hit OK
5. To show the gridlines, go to View > Show > Grid or use the shortcut (Ctrl + ‘ – but check your own settings.)

The video recommends creating a new document which is smaller than the original photograph, then copying it to this new document so it can be moved to the appropriate spot.

Copying the Image to a New Document is Stupid

When I went to apply this to my own workflow, I discovered a number of things about this method that I don’t like:

• Copying an image to a new document strips the EXIF (camera) data and metadata (copyright, website) associated in the original document. That’s super annoying. I always like using the original document to save copies of my file because it saves all that data along with it.
• I also like to keep all my workflow in one document because I take snapshots along the way and can easily use the history palette to go back to any point in editing.
• I like my photos to be as big as possible, so the idea of starting out with an arbitrary smaller size is not appealing to me.
• Even with the smaller size, sometimes aligning the subject to the sweet spot requires more cropping anyway.

Applying the valuable tips given in the video, I found an extremely easy way to crop photos using the rule of thirds within the original document.

For this example, I tried applying the rule of thirds when composing this shot, but I was a little off. I find this happens frequently. The rule of thirds is a science, so yeah – being a little off any which way does matter.

First, show the gridline over the photo as described above.

If the subject needs to be moved to a sweet spot:

1. Make a duplicate of the background layer. (Ctrl + J)
2. Hide the original background layer by clicking on the eye icon on the layers palette.
3. Select the duplicate background layer and use the Move tool to move the subject to the desired spot.

Now the subject’s in the sweet spot, but obviously some cropping needs to be done:

I’ve found by cropping equal amounts off opposite sides, the subject will stay in the sweet spot. If some needs to come off the top, take an equal amount off the bottom. Same with the sides.

Here’s the shot after crop, with the gridlines showing:

Hey Nimwit! That didn’t work!

Well, without exact values, the subject will shift slightly from the sweet spot. I’m not sure how to crop exactly without first doing a bunch of time consuming calculations.

Visually estimating the crop as described above is much quicker for me when slight adjustments need to be made. When I have to crop a LOT I start having problems. The more that’s cropped, the more precision is needed.

There’s an alternative method similar to the one described in the video, but will still keep all workflow in one document:

1. Make a copy of your background layer and hide the original background layer as above
2. Go to Image > Canvas Size.
3. Change the units in the drop down to percent and reduce your canvas size to 80 or 90% for both height and width. (Or more, if the subject is very far off from the sweet spot already.)
4. Use the Move tool to move the background copy to the sweet spot.
5. If needed, it’s possible to go back to Image > Canvas Size to reduce the canvas again.

The Final Edit

Unrelated to this article, here is the final Photoshop edit for the image above. I used a black and white adjustment layer in overlay mode with a low opacity on top.

What Works for You?

Do you apply a similar cropping method in another editing tool? Or do you use an entirely different method to apply the rule of thirds to your shots?

Copying an image from the original file to a new document is popular in some action sets. I always disable these commands in the actions, but it leaves me wondering why anyone would do such a thing. Is there any benefit to it?

Please let me know what you think in the comments!