Use the crop tool – Apple Motion 5.1.1 User Manual
Page 221
Chapter 7
Basic compositing
221
Use the Crop tool
The Crop tool activates onscreen cropping handles that you can drag to resize the borders of
a layer.
Cropping lets you chop off any of the four edges of a layer to eliminate parts you don’t want to
see in your composition. Common examples of layers you’d want to crop are video clips with a
black line or unwanted vignetting around the edges. You can use the crop operation to remove
these undesirable artifacts. You might also crop a layer to isolate a single element of the image.
When you crop an imported image using the Crop tool (which yields the same result as using
the Crop controls in the layer’s Properties Inspector), only the instance of that file is cropped.
The source image in the Media list is not cropped. To crop the source image, you must select the
layer in the Media list, then use the Crop tools in the Media Inspector. For more information, see
on page 178.
Note: If you must isolate a more irregularly shaped layer, or you want to create a border of a
specific shape, see
Shapes, masks, and paint strokes overview
on page 828.
Crop a layer in the Canvas
1
Choose the Crop tool from the 2D tools pop-up menu in the toolbar.
2
In the Canvas, drag any of the eight handles around the edge of the layer to crop the sides:
•
Drag the top, left, right, or bottom handle to only crop one edge.
•
Drag a four-corner handle to crop two adjacent edges simultaneously.
•
Press Shift while you drag to constrain corner- or edge-cropping to the aspect ratio of
the layer.
Note: If a layer is modified with the Distort tool, the Crop tool and its onscreen controls
become disabled. However, you can still crop a distorted layer by adjusting its Crop parameter
settings in the Properties Inspector.
Move the crop area while keeping the underlying image in place
m
Drag inside the crop area.
67% resize factor