Lightroom: Cropping to Fixed Size

I’m in process of making moo cards. For the one that don’t know, moo cards are business cards where you can set as many as 50 photos per batch of 50 business cards. The requirements are that the photos must be 1039 pixels by 697 pixels at 300 dpi. These dimensions include the bleeding areas.

So how to crop the photos to 1039 pixels by 697 pixels?

1. Lightroom cannot crop the photos to 1039 pixels by 697 pixels. Lightroom does not crop to a size.
2. Lightroom crops to a ratio. 1039 divided by 697 = 1.49067 or almost 1.491
3. Or Lightroom crops to a ratio. 697 divided by 1039 = 0.6708 or almost 0.671

• Create 2 custom aspect ratios, the first one as: 1.491 by 1 and the second one as: 0.671 by 1.

  • If the size required is less than 999 pixels by 999 pixels, you can enter the pixels, and Lightroom will convert them to a ratio.
  • If you want a photo to be 800 pixels by 640 pixels, you can enter 800 by 600. Lightroom will display these numbers but will convert them to a ratio.
  • Lock the aspect ratio, by pressing on the padlock.

• Select the new aspect ratio.

• Do the cropping.

Q: So how do we get the correct size?

A: By exporting the photos.

• Switch to the Library module, select your photos and export them with:

In the Image Sizing section of the export, set your pixel sizes, and do the exports.