Do you think it’s possible to teach good taste to a computer?, or that a program can suggest better picture compositions? That is what free online service Croppola aspires to; it “provides automatic suggestions to obtain the best composition from pictures you have already shot”,
which, in English, means that it will suggest ways to crop your images that can potentially give you a better result and a better image.
Croppola is a free web service that lets you upload pictures in batch, suggests image crops for each, and will let you download the cropped files in one go as well.
But does it work? Judge for yourself. I tested 6 images in total; here are the before and afters. Note: Croppola-processed image is always on the RIGHT.
Here’s where I think the cropping worked: click on each set to preview
Here’s where I think it didn’t: cropped is on the right; click to preview
The verdict: not a bad tool at all; however, it is handicapped considerably by the simple fact that you need to upload and download your image, and I cannot seriously see myself doing so for large image libraries. Best used for a handful of images that you would like an ‘opinion’ on, as it were.
Wish list: in our opinion, Croppola should have a downloadable option that can be run locally on your PC or device, which would circumvent the problem of having to upload your images.
[Thanks go to reader Panzer for the tip about this service].
Check out Croppola.
