WYSIWYG Image Cropper with Aspect Ratio

[ICEBreaker]

Dear Mac users,

Sometimes, it can get quite frustrating when a blindingly obvious feature is not available in any of the most famous software on the market, especially when the said feature is now the standard on tablet apps.

My requirements are simple:

1. Image crop software
2. Crop on the actual image itself, so I determine which part of the photo I want to crop
3. Maintain a selected aspect-ratio
4. Preferably maintain a selected aspect-ratio AND resolution by scaling the photo i.e. set the desired resolution (say 1024x768), and regardless of the size of the crop, the end result will scale up or down to 1024x768.
5. Preferably a freeware or something under $20

Another way of saying it, is that I want to crop photos to a certain size (say 1024x768), and be able to select which part of the photo I want, say, the cloud on the top right hand corner. Sounds simple, but at the moment, it's a multistep process.

Take a look at Piczard, which is pretty close to what I want. Unfortunately, it's for Windows.

GIMP's crop feature is not bad, but I was hoping for something where the editing could be done on the image itself and not in a tiny dialog box, and more importantly, can scale up and down the crop.

Hope someone can give me a recommendation! Thank you!

JC

 

[GGJstudios]

Preview, which comes with your Mac, can do what you need. You can draw any size frame around your image (it tells you the dimensions as you draw the box), then you can move that fixed frame around to position it before you crop. You can also resize pictures with ease, and perform other functions, as well. There's no need for a 3rd party app to do what Preview does quickly and easily.

 

[Weaselboy]

If I am understanding what you are trying to do, it looks like iPhoto will do what you want.

 

[ICEBreaker]

Thanks GGJstudios and Weaselboy for your replies. It's not exactly what I want, but they are half way there (fulfilling criteria 1, 2, 3, and 5, but not 4). Preview is OK, but iPhotos is much better because it allows you to choose from common aspect ratios or type in the custom value (which is much better than dragging it out by hand as in Preview). iPhotos is also better than GIMP because I can see the actual photo (WYSIWYG). I think I will be using iPhotos from now on. All I need to do at the end is to do a batch scale-up/down job afterwards (since all the photos are in the right aspect ratio, but the wrong sizes/resolution). Thanks Weaselboy. I don't know how I missed iPhotos.