digital Manipulation - cropping an image

I need to crop an image for Assignment 215 and this is the image I have chosen:

                       I took this shot whilst out at Matlock Bath for the day and as we walked along a pathway to our next destination, I spotted this lovely mosey log just begging to be taken with  the light catching its leaves.  It was awkward stubbling on the ground to get to its eye level, as it was on a slanting upward bank up, but it was worth it I thought and as I looked down the length of the log, on its ground level, it made for an interesting view point.  I composed the shot handheld because it was not possible to mount a tripod on such a slope from a safety and practical point of view, even had my tripod been of the type to get sufficiently low.

I placed the image in Photoshop and used the marquee tool to select the section of the image I wanted to keep in the composition.  I experimented for a while, moving the selection around in the image in search of the best place, in my opinion...                                        
There was plenty  of black in the image, too much in the foreground with some fuzzy parts showing there too.  I decided to crop it to 8in x 4in,  trying to keep some of the curvature of the log's shape.  First though I darkened the contrasts in levels, which helped die down the distracting background middle bright piece of leaf:-
  I opened up a new adjustment layer for this, clicking on the half blacked out icon in the palette above the layers box (just below the output levels slider, see below image) and adjusted the slider levels.  I made the black slightly darker for more impact and contrast of the light on the log.  Also this took some detail from a background,  as mentioned, light on the slightly distracting leaf, so it blended in better. Once I had decided on my crop I clicked 'image' at the top of the photoshop menu, and 'crop' in the subsequent drop down box.

Here is the cropped version:

                                                                          Mosey Log
                                              shutter 1/125 aperture f5.6 iso 200 FL 55mm

This is a better look.  I decided to crop at this eye view straight down the length of the log level, because this was the picture as I saw it at the time.  I did move the selected marquee box around the image before cropping to try different angled looks, and tried slicing the log in half lengthwise to experiment, but I wanted to emphasise the log's curvature of its width on both sides, and its length with the contrasts of its short moss grass to its rooting shrubs.  I also wanted to show an approximate equal amount of dark background to that of subject matter.  I could not crop any more off the foreground because I would have lost some of the curvature which gives it its outline as a form of log, and this shows what it is, when being taken from an unusually low view point.  The eye is now drawn into the middle easier , then up the stalk lines to rest on the leaves, rather than focussing on the blurry front edges.  It looks like the  image has more depth of field this way too.

File Format:
Once cropped, I saved it directly as a jpg file, (as shown in the image above), with clicking on 'file', 'save as' and choosing 'jpg' setting from the pop up box.  I saved it directly to a 'jpg' file,  rather than a 'psd', knowing that I would not need to amend it anymore.  Whereas if  I thought I would need to carry out further amendments, I would have initially saved it as a 'psd' with options then to go back in and carry out further adjustments, and ultimately then save as a 'jpg'.   A jpg file is the best format for photographs because its optimization works best on continuous-tone images.  Such files should be saved at a high preset setting to attain the best quality.  Presentation wise they can be used in print form and in magazines with a 300 dpi, which can be reduced to a lower dpi say of 70 or 72 for use on the web, aiding quickness and ease of application.

Output/presentation:
In my decision to choose the size of the crop I considered how I would be presenting my image.   For this course I will be displaying them on my blog so thought it nice to have a range where they are not all necessarily the same.  If I had wanted to display it in an album, photo book or mounted frame, I would have needed to be more specific, ensuring that I would be matching the size of my crop, and any intended border, to commercial sized books and frames.

Research:
Photoshop CS5 in easy steps page 215 - jpeg optimization settings.

Equipment used:
                                           Photoshop CS5