Lightroom 1.1 / 1.2 - Crop overlay to aid composition

Anyone who's investigated the theory of photographic composition will be aware of principles such as the Rule of Thirds, The Golden Ratio and The Golden Spiral and other guidelines designed to help create pleasing compositions and direct the viewer's eyes to the main subjects thereby giving your images more impact.  Whilst no one would advocate adhereing strictly to these methods they can certainly be useful aids, unfortunately visualising them isn't always easy and that's where some new features in Lightroom 1.1 can help.

Lightroom can display a number of different compositional aids as overlays when using the Crop / Straighten tool, these can be used to help improve the composition when you're cropping or just to examine how your images comply with various composition guidelines.  There are six overlays to choose from (as shown below) and where appropriate these can be rotated. 

Grid	Thirds	Diagonal
Triangle	Golden Ratio	Golden Spiral

• Select the image you want to experiment with and press R to go into the Develop Module with the Crop / Straighten tool loaded.
• Now press Ctrl+Shift+H to show the Crop Overlay, other options can be found in the View - Tool Overlay menu
• Select different overlays either by pressing O or by selecting them from the View - Crop Guide Overlay menu
• Finally, the Triangle and Golden Spiral can be rotated by pressing Shift+O or selecting it from the View - Crop Guide Overlay menu

 If you'd like more information about composition guidelines for photography have a look at some of the links at the end of this article, but remember these words:

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. - Ansel Adams

There is no formula for a good photograph. Mediocre pictures may follow a formula, good ones seldom do: When the visual tools are used just right, the design, lighting, mood, and emotion come together to just the right point, and that point hits you and you know what the photographer meant – that’s a good picture. - Ed Feingers