Gimp: Trim photos for required Aspect Ratio

I generally trim my photos for what I consider to be the best composition.

 

So I end up with a photo collection of odd shaped rectangles.

But sometimes it is necessary to trim them to a pre-defined aspect ratio, maybe for publication.

Recently I took some shots of my house which needed to be in landscape format with a ratio of 3:2. If I'd just supplied my original edited photos, I suspect the marketing website would have simply trimmed and/or stretched them to fit ...urgh!

As its not that often that I need to do this, I don't seem to remember each time the need comes around again. So this is a reminder of just how easy it is using Gimp.

This image of our kitchen was originally produced by stitching together a number of photos...

...and has an aspect ratio of: 1.9:1

 

method

So to change it to 1.5:1 (3:2) in Gimp, load the image and select the Rectangle Select Tool.

Open the Tool Options tab.

Set the aspect ratio as required (e.g. 3:2) and check the "Fixed" box.

Drag a corner of the Rectangle Select across the image so that 2 sides (in this case the horizontals) align with the image.

Now move the whole rectangle from the centre (i.e. to keep the rectangle's size) to crop the desired section.

the final 3:2 image of our kitchen

Its as easy as that!