Losing sharpness when cropping

Welcome to the Apple Discussions. After cropping what are the photo's dimensions, in pixels, typically?

If you export a cropped photo to the Desktop and open it with another application is it still less sharp?

I am new to Mac and was persuaded to buy because of the superior photo facility. However, I too find that when I crop a photo - no matter how sharp the original image - the cropped result is always blurred. Surely this can't be right !
Sharpness is not affected if I zoom in on a photo - it just seems to be the cropping action.

How much do you crop it? If you crop down to a very small portion of the original photo the remaining portion will be scaled to fill the window causing pixillation.

Thank you for your interest - it is much appreciated.
I am not cropping most of the original - just the unwanted edges. I have successfully cropped the same photos in Google's excellent free download 'Picasa', down to a very small portion.
Can you tell me if this poor cropping facility is a regular feature of IPhoto '11 - or do you think it could be a corrupted download of IPhoto - as has been suggested to me by another Mac user. If so, is it possible to uninstall IPhoto and reinstall. If so - how ? Because I have only had my Mac a couple of weeks I am not au fait with all its workings and sometimes find 'Help' unclear !
Many thanks in anticipation.....

As a Test:

Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library'

Import a few pics into this new, blank library. Is the Problem repeated there?

Regards

TD

Terence, thank you for your advice.
I have tried what you suggested but if anything it is perhaps a trifle worse and the pics imported into IPhoto themselves - just taken - seem a little blurred compared to the same photos being imported via Picasa ! Also the zoom now blurs any picture it is used on ! Has this new library replaced the original library and if not how do I revert back to the original ?

Log into another user account on your Mac and see if cropping with iPhoto there loses sharpness also. This will tell if it's a system wide issue or limited to just your account.

Thanks Old Toad.
I tried this too - but no joy - it's the same result in the new account too.
However, I have noticed that on selecting a picture to process - when I click the 'edit' option the selected picture loses its sharpness before cropping but the loss of sharpness is more evident after cropping.
It's all very disappointing !

I have noticed that photos sometimes become noticeable blurry in edit mode with iPhoto '11 after certain edits (including using the straighten tool). I'm only observing this while in Edit mode. Once you exit Edit mode, it is shown again without the blurriness. If you are observing the same thing, then there isn't really anything to worry about because the actual picture that you see in normal mode or when exporting is not affected. iPhoto probably creates a lower-quality preview just for editing.

Hi Tilman - your'e spot on !

After contacting Apple Tech Help last night and this morning they looked into it for me and after playing around with the problem a short while came up with:
'After you crop the picture as you want it, click on Events on the left hand side in order to refresh the application. Click on Photos again and locate that cropped photo. Should be fine now."

And this works - Yippee !

Thank you to everyone who tried to help - it was much appreciated.
Mission accomplished !

TVLJ

In iPhoto 11... In Edit mode, if I zoom-in I expect the same on-screen appearance as when I crop to the same degree. Instead the results are different. Shooting a 12MPx Canon, working with jpg in iPhoto, if I crop to 1/4 the original size, the on-screen view looks unsharp. Undo the crop and zoom to the same degree and the photo looks very sharp.

Danger: If you use crop to judge the sharpness of your image, you may be misled.

Solution: After cropping, zoom in just a little bit. My good images sharpen up dramatically.

To Apple: This looks like a bug to me.

Excellent workarounds per TVLJ and MajorBlack - but really Apple!!??

We used to draw a box and click ONE button to crop. Who messed with my iPhoto?