Cropping Pictures for HDTV

[drose]

I have a lot of 3:2 aspect ratio pictures and want to crop those pictures for (my new) HDTV screen. I need a function in a way that ...

1) Irfan puts a crop frame with 16:9 aspect ratio in the middle of the hight of the picture while spanning the original width of the picture.
2) shows some handels on the frame to eventualy reduce or move the frame while preserving the aspect ratio.
3) crop and save the picture

There might be an option to reduce size to 1920x1024. But most TV sets can scale pictures to full screen.

Know the workflow for eacht picture would be :
... Selekt Picture to crop,
... only move the frame (which is as wide as the original picture) up or down to select the desired view,
... execute.

This will be sufficient for most (95%) of the/my pictures. Only a few will need to reduce the width of the crop frame and to move to the left or to the right.

Any suggestions to my reguest ?

Regards
Ditmar

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Maybe you want to try using the available tools before deciding how they could be made easier to use. Shift C will open the Create Custom Selection dialogue, where you chose the 16:9 aspect ratio. Set the width to the width of your pictures, and position the crop selection somewhere near the top or at Y=0. Drag with the right mouse to position the crop and Control Y to crop.

I don't think there could be any fully automated method as each picture is unique. It would be easier if the cursor keys would move the custom selection.

[drose]

Well i must admit that i didn´t now this option. But there a several drawbacks ...
1) No standard option to keep picture width or(!!) picture height (just for easy useage)
2) No standard dimension for HDTV1080 (1920 x 1080) or HDTV720 (1280 × 720)
3) One can move the crop frame beyond the picture. If i set the crop frame to picture widht it is allowed to move the frame horizontal outside the picture. I asumed that i can only move up or down. Now i have to be careful while moving up or down. A option to select only horizontal or vertical movement when pressing shift would be useful.
4) No.2) is also missing in the resize dialog (CTRL-R). At least these values should be the same in any dimension dialog part of irfan.

Anyhow it is a good approach for my problem. Thank you for the hint.
br Ditmar

[drose]

I forgot : how about lossless croping ? I believe that irfan will crop on the decompressed jpeg instead of using lossless jpeg crop. But that is an architectural item. Irfan is designed to handle bitmaps. Am i right ?

oops i found a lossless crop function and it even stores the croped picture with one opertion. Know i need only a magic key for lossless cropping. I there an option to put a plugin call to the toolbar ?
br Ditmar

[Frank]

Try JPEGCrops!

Using this tool you can select any wanted picture format!
See the thread: "Try the best tool for this task - JPEGCrops..."

[Sjef]

Or maybe Faststone (free)...