Does anyone have any ideas about how an image can be cropped (no resizing up or down) with a constrained aspect ratio - I use 3.05 + 5.5 I currently make a frame on a new layer using C.A.R.(selection marquee) and then use the frame as a cropping guide when in the correct position. Using size and resolution info in the crop tool options box is of little help in this task.

Well, as you probably already know, you can just punch in the numbers in Image, Canvas size, but that only works properly if you are going to center the crop or if it is all the way to one side. Seems to me I've gotten the constraining parts to work with the cropping tool, but they don't work the way you would think they should.

Thanks Jim, but using canvas size presupposes that I know beforehand what position and size (in pixels or linear measure + resolution) the cropped image is going to be as well as the aspect ratio of the 2 sides. I often have to selectively enlarge 6 by 4 photos to fill an A4 sheet (printable area 1.371:1 on my printer). Using the selection marquee on C.A.R. allows me to choose the best crop position and still know that the image is the right shape to fill the paper. I usually scan at 600dpi to ensure that there's always enough info for the final print, after having adjusted resolution to get the correct print size. Personally, I think it's a feature that's missing that should be there, as it's a direct equivalent to cropping a photo using a mask + scalpel.

I just played around with the cropping tool, I see how it works now- if you click on the fixed size button and enter a size in pixels or an inch and dpi size it actually uses the ratio between the height and the width to lock the aspect ratio of the crop, but the crop itself can be any size. Then once you do the actual crop it does a resize to give you the dimentions you entered. Is that not what you need?

Thanks again, Jim, but no, it's not what I'm after. Using the CAR marquee route ensures that I only throw away the part of the image I don't want (which is fine). The selected part of the image (which is eventually cropped to the same size and proportions) retains all of the original information contained in it. Nothing is invented or more importantly (for me) thrown away. If the eventual crop has more info than necessary it may be useful in the future for producing even larger prints than those done initially. If I'm doing something with a known resolution/printed size requirement then I'll use the system you've just suggested and it works just fine. The CAR problem as I've (perhaps inadequately) described it only occurs in a free ranging situation where there's only 1 file to print, and the resolution can be set accordingly after the required image portion has been selected from the original. - thanks pp