EasyCrop - the Simple Way to Create and Edit Screen Shots on the Mac

You can't always judge a book by its cover, and the same is true of software. For instance, what purpose does a program like Microsoft Excel perform? If you didn't know, would you have any idea that it's a spreadsheet program? What about something like Bean? Well, it's a word processor, but you wouldn't know it by the program's name.

Fortunately, there are some programs (like iTunes and Photoshop), whose purposes are a little easier to discern. Such is the case with a little utility I stumbled on the other day called EasyCrop. If you didn't know better, you would assume that EasyCrop is a program that makes it simple to crop photos.

And you know what? You'd be exactly right.

For the last few software reviews, I've been using EasyCrop to cut my screen shots down to the correct dimensions. Typically when taking screen shots, I use option (built into Mac OS X), that allows me to select a certain portion of the screen. Usually this is a single window, but sometimes I want more. Occasionally, however, for whatever reason, I'm unable to use that, so I'm forced to take a screen shot of the entire screen, then open up a photo editor and chop it down to size.

Whatever your needs, EasyCrop makes this process a breeze.

If you have an image already that needs cropping, simply open up EasyCrop and drag the image into the drop zone on the left. EasyCrop will immediately display your image. If the image is from a camera, it's possible it needs to be rotated, so EasyCrop offers this option. You can rotate by 45 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise, or - in the case where you may have taken a good photo, but had the camera tilted a bit to the left or right, you can perform a free rotation.

Once you're happy with the rotation, it's time to cut your image down to size... a process that couldn't be easier. If you mouse over the small thumbnail image, you'll notice a set of red crosshairs that follow your mouse. To select the segment of the image you want to crop, click and drag over the area. As you do this, you'll see that area magically appear in the right hand area.