Who Says You Have to Settle on 1 Crop?

Meet Timmy the Turtle.

Upon returning from a recent kayaking trip, I was processing the day's photos which typically begins with me comparing "like photos" to identify the "keeper" of the group.  The rest get sent packing.

I liked this shot of a Painted turtle sunning himself on the log and cropped it to include the foreground lily pad and the turtle's reflection.  Good. Move on to the next pic....

Hold the phone! Not so fast.  I like the crop, but this guy seems to have a lot of personality and some pretty amazing colors.  I'm not so sure this crop helps to reveal all of that.  Maybe if we zoom in a little more?  Let's experiment.

While this is a very simple concept, it's one that we may overlook.  Lightroom is "non-destructive".  Say it with me... "Lightroom is non-destructive".  Simply put, your original image is never altered or gone.  Just because I cropped the image as shown here, the rest of the "trimmings" are still there... and I can still use them.

In this case, I wanted an even tighter crop, but that's not to say I couldn't also have gone the other way and included more of the image in an alternate crop.  It's as simple as making a virtual copy  (Ctrl + ') and re-processing.  If you wanted to get back to the original image with the virtual copy, simply click the "Reset" button.

So here's Timmy again - up close and personal.  I like this crop too... and just like that my 1 "Timmy the Turtle keeper" now appears 2 times in my catalog.  Often I'm so focused on narrowing in on the best of the images and getting rid of the rest, I don't stop to think that there's nothing wrong with taking several cracks at processing that image.  Maybe I should make 1 more turtle crop?  I could have a Timmy the Turtle Tryptic!

If you think you've seen the last of Timmy the Turtle, you'd be wrong.  Stop back tomorrow when Timmy the Turtle makes an encore appearance in this week's "Title This" post.

Until next time, keep click'n.
-Ken