Have you tried FIlmulator’s cropping?
I put rather a lot of effort (months of thought) into making it work quickly and easily.
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I also find the cropping tool frustrating. It doesn’t work the way I expect. Most suggestions above are in line with mine but to reiterate.
- After crop action only the active area should be visible.
- Guides should only be visible during crop
- Unless crop is active the image should behave as if only the crop exists. Zoom, browser, edit.
- Dragging the crop should be dine using modifier key.
- grabbing the crop mark should be easier. Bigger click target.
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The rawproc crop tool is a child of expediency as much as anything; I was writing my image library and I just needed to see how the ApplyCrop() method worked. The big decision was to have a separate window for the tool, and to have it update the display after every modification of the crop rectangle:
The tool is in the Parameters pane, lower left. The crop rectangle is pretty simple; it has two resize targets: the yellow one maintains original aspect, and the red one is free-form. The crop rectangle can be dragged around the image by mouse-dragging anywhere in the rectangle. That’s about it. Oh, the Parameters pane can be drug from the dock and made larger, which I occasionally do in order to have a bigger crop tool with which to work.
Of note about rawproc is that it is a successive application of tools, one working on the previous tool’s output. In this case, the crop tool is the first one in the chain, working on the opened JPEG. The next tool added would be working on the cropped image. When the image is saved to a file, the product of the last tool is used.
I cobbled together the crop tool mainly to get something going, but I find it works really well, so I’m keeping it. It’s not a precision tool, nor does it have the rich selection of aspect ratios, but it gets the crop job done.
I like the crop tool like it is and don’t understand why to change it.
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As I see this, the tool works well, and using programs with slightly different approaches is also not a problem, when all of them are made reasonably well.
I’m a long time user and have no problem with the crop tool except one minor gripe. I don’t like that it opens with the ‘lock ratio’ selected. I’d rather see it set to free, but I’ve learned to live with it as is.
I guess you are using a default profile. Change the ratio to OFF and save this profile.
Hint: The crop tool has to be activated to save the new setting. Then switch the tool off and save it again.
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I agree with neilpho ;
When I want to crop, I’m using another software (FastStone)).
Same thing too adjust horizonability.
Why specifically?
Because it is more easier to use faststone or CNX2 for that.
For exemple, one can move the shape in the picture with the mouse, and with “enter”, we have the new picture on the screen…and only the new.
I’m sorry, but now, i’m using RT only for pictures very hard to work because its tools are very good, but for all days, I’m using Darktable 2.4 or CNX-2.
The “default” mode rarely give me a good picture at first time, while my other softs needs only very few adjustments for that.
Oh… I forgot to say that RT is slow to work now…
Same in RawTherapee.
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Crop
I’m not affected by your personal choices.
That statement is too vague to be meaningful.
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/How_to_write_useful_bug_reports
<< That statement is too vague to be meaningful.>>
Yes indeed, but now, as I use it not often, I was waiting for another upgrade.
I tryed to follow the very very long tread about that, but I disconnected : too long, too complex ; I’m photographer, not programmer… and my english is too poor.
About the croping, I didn’t know because I didn’t read the tutorial… Cropping is a basic process and normally one should not to search anything.
Most of other software use the mouse in order to move the croped area.
So, it doesn’t matter… you know, I use ON1-effect, Nik Software, CNX-2, FastStone, GIMP, PhotoFiltre and Darktable for my work ; every have one tool or more that I prefer at the others and that’s enough for me.
I almost regret my post …
deleted
Hi, I tried to make use of the feedback provided here, and created a crop-tweaks branch which tries to improve the user experience of the crop tool. Feedback is highly appreciated. I won’t tell you what it does, figuring it out is also part of the feedback 
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RawTherapee_crop-tweaks_5.3-386-g0ac3bafb_WinVista_64.zip
uploaded at
https://keybase.pub/gaaned92/RTW64NightlyBuilds/
@agriggio
I really prefer when the guides appear in the main window.
As I was quite satisfied with previous crop GUI, I don’ t have any other remark.
@gaaned92 thanks a lot for the build!
thanks. The plan is to have this configurable in preferences – hopefully whis will satisfy everyone 
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Compiled crop-tweaks branch commit 0ac3bafb
- The auto-zoom-to-crop behavior makes it difficult to tweak your crop when you mistakenly made it to tight. I’ve noticed that I can “get out” of the auto zoom by manually zoming or using f but this isn’t very transparent or expected.
- Having guide lines visible only when dragging works for me but i’d prefer them not to be visible in the file browser.
On the whole I’m afraid it doesn’t solve my issues with the tool but the grid tweak is an improvement. What would solve the issue for me is, as someone mentioned above, a different active-tool logic.
The crop tool would be activated by c or click on crop icon. The crop icon is highlighted strong to indicate active tool mode. Alternatively an on off toggle is used for crop mode?
- The full extent of the raw capture is revealed
- The chosen grid lines are displayed
- Drag handles are activated
- Dragging the crop frame around is possible by just click-dragging inside the crop mask
- c or icon/toggle click exits crop mode, hides cropped data in Editor and File Browser, hides grid lines. The thumbnails will now display only the crop as if the other data is gone.
Potentially the dashed outline (not guides) is visible in File Browser and Editor as an indication that the file is cropped. The zoom to crop icon is now superflous and should be removed.
My speculation is that the concept of not touching the raw data is influencing the design of some tools in problematic ways. It’s as if cropping and perspective correction Make perspective correction not crop the image · Issue #198 · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub must somehow represent visually and conceptually that raw data isn’t deleted or modified. It could also be the existing code making some things a bit more difficult i guess. It’s just curious that considering all the great tools in RawTherapee it’s the canvas altering tools that are most problematic. I still can’t use RT perspective correction because it eats pixels and the cropping tool is also very unusual.
Perhaps part of my expectations clash with RT ideas. I frequently use the RT file browser to select files to be exported for various uses. This means I need to be able to assess the images from the file browser tab. Perhaps I’m aiming to send out 12 images out of 400 to an AD or for display on a website. I cant assess an image very well when cropped away data is visible and guides are shown. Same goes for processing. It’s hard to judge tweaks when cropped away data is visible. It changes my judgement. Perhaps a different workflow is expected?
I don’t have access to the proprietary alternatives right now but it would be interesting to know how they have solved it. The Darktable tool works exactly as I would expect. I use image editing tools a lot at work (days on end) and have used them privately since photoshop had an eye on the icon. For raw development i’ve used RT at work for last couple of years so don’t know the proprietary alternatives.
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hi, and thanks for the detailed feedback! I’ll try to take it into account.
how so? my speculation is that the problem is a combination of:
- we don’t have enough manpower
- several people (myself included) think the crop tool, although not perfect, is already usable
- we have more interesting (for us) things to do
but hey, this is just speculation 
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