How do you turn a landscape photo into portrait format?

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

We received another interesting question from one of our readers. The question came from Erwin Honig and was as follows:

I have taken a few portrait photos in landscape format. But I would like to be able to print them in portrait format so they fit in the photo frames. What is the best way to do this? I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 as my editing software.

Crop tool

Cropping to a specific format

Now choose your crop ratio in the shortcut menu, such as 2:3 (4:6). When you click and drag with the Crop tool (C), the frame will be limited to a format with a 2:3 ratio.

If you want to create your own custom ratio or size, you only need to enter it in the two fields that appear directly to the right of the shortcut menu. To quickly switch these numbers, click the Clear button to the right of them.

The button with the two small arrows between the input fields for the custom ratios swaps the two numbers. This changes a 2:3 ratio to a 3:2 ratio with one click.

If you change your mind and want to make a different crop, press the Esc key on the keyboard. To cancel the crop completely, press the Delete key (PC: Backspace).

The crop ratios now need to be changed from 3:2 (landscape) to 2:3 (portrait). So make sure that the numbers 2 and 3 are entered in the two fields respectively. You can see that a large part of the musician's left hand and back is now cut off. Not very nice!

You can now expand the canvas, keeping the proportions intact, so that the musician fits in it completely. However, you now have a large white area at the top.

You can try to fill this white area. In this case, that is easy because it can be selected easily. Select the white area with the rectangular marquee tool. Then go to the Edit menu and choose Fill.

When the Fill dialogue box appears, choose Content-Aware from the shortcut menu if it has not already been selected. When you click OK, Photoshop looks at the surroundings and intelligently adapts the fill, rather than simply filling it with white or black.

It usually produces a fairly good result, as in the inset below. However, when it does not, it looks terrible and makes no sense. Use Command-Z (PC: Ctrl-Z) to undo it, then find another way to fill those areas manually. Usually with the Clone Stamp tool.

The result is still not very good, as there is far too much empty space at the top of the photo. It might still be usable for a magazine, as you could fit a lot of text in it.

Landscape portrait photos often work better in a square format, with a 1:1 ratio, when you convert them, rather than in portrait format. So thinking carefully before taking the photo is the more convenient option!

Conclusion

Photoshop course at Photofacts Academy

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