Cropping is one of the first editing tools most photographers learn — but it’s also one of the most misunderstood.
In his second free training video for the Journal of Wildlife Photography, Matt Kloskowski breaks down how to crop smarter, straighten your photos more effectively, and even fix photos that were cropped too tightly in-camera.
Whether you’re working in Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, or Photoshop, this tutorial will give you new tools to rethink how you frame and save your wildlife images.
1. Start with Straightening
One of the biggest mistakes Matt sees? Crooked images that sneak by unnoticed.
Even when there’s no clear horizon, you can use subtle visual clues — like water ripples, shoreline lines, or that thin strip of sharp detail across the background — to get things looking right.
Matt demonstrates how to use the Angle tool in the crop panel to manually straighten your images, and explains why the Auto Straighten feature often fails with birds or animals on the ground.
2. Understand What “Aspect Ratio” Really Means
Matt also clears up a common misconception: cropping to 8×10 or 4×5 doesn’t mean your image becomes 8×10 inches. These are aspect ratios, not physical sizes.
The actual size of your photo is set when you export it, not while you’re editing. So don’t panic about inches or DPI until you’re saving for print or sharing.
He also drops some handy tips:
- Hold Shift to lock aspect ratio while cropping
- Press X to flip between horizontal and vertical crops
3. Cropped Too Tight? Photoshop Can Help
This is where the video really takes off.
Matt walks you through how to expand the canvas of a photo that was cropped too close — like when a wingtip or tail was accidentally cut off. Then he demonstrates two powerful tools:
Content-Aware Fill
- Doesn’t use AI
- Great for extending blurry or simple backgrounds
- Matches texture more naturally
- Often works well for personal or social media images
Generative Expand
- Uses AI to rebuild missing areas (like a clipped foot or wing)
- Generates multiple versions to choose from
- Works best with out-of-focus or simple backgrounds
- Great for salvaging keepers that otherwise would’ve been trashed
Matt even shows how to clean up results using the Remove tool to smooth over any weird patches.
4. When (and Why) to Use These Tools
Matt is clear about one thing: these techniques probably won’t be allowed in contests.
But if you’re editing for personal use, printing for yourself, or sharing online, they can be game changers — especially when you’ve got a great moment in a photo that just needs a bit more room to breathe.
Watch the video above to see exactly how Matt fixes tight crops and tricky horizons?
This is the second video in our free editing series with Matt Kloskowski — and there’s more coming soon.
If you’ve ever struggled with framing, cropping, or “almost” shots that feel just a little too tight, this one’s for you.