I have the Canon EF 8-15 Fisheye Lens. I wish to crop the center image and remove the rest of the black image outside the circle. I have not found an easy way to do this. I would like to request the ability to crop circles just the same way as cropping a rectangle.
- 15 Posts
- 1 Reply Like
Posted 1 month ago
- 102 Posts
- 51 Reply Likes
Hi Michael, please try the vignette with soft edge to zero, but before that you should do a square crop, because in LR crop the vignette is not visible.
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1617 Posts
- 548 Reply Likes
As Peter suggests first apply a 1:1 Crop and adjust the size and position of the crop if required. It may be a little off-center and need a slight repositioning to center it.
Next apply a circular Radial Filter by holding down the shift key. Adjust the size and centering as required and then apply the below Radial Filter settings. You can also adjust the settings to make the area outside the image black (Exposure -4.00, Blacks -100).

Next apply a circular Radial Filter by holding down the shift key. Adjust the size and centering as required and then apply the below Radial Filter settings. You can also adjust the settings to make the area outside the image black (Exposure -4.00, Blacks -100).

(Edited)
- 102 Posts
- 51 Reply Likes
Thanks Todd, have tried a radial filter first and found that was not giving 100% black, but that is depending on the brightness of the picture. Now we have two ways do do it. :-)
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1617 Posts
- 548 Reply Likes
Peter, with a circular fisheye image file the area outside the circle is almost 100% black, but you're right that non-fisheye images may have some areas that aren't fully black. There's an easy solution to make the circular Radial Filter work with any image type.
After creating the Radial Filter with the suggested settings (-4.00 Exposure, -100 Blacks) hover over the pin, right-click, and select 'Duplicate.' This will apply the settings twice, which should work with any image type and make the area outside the circular crop 100% black (0, 0,0 RGB). You can save the Radial Filter as a new Develop Preset named Circular Crop Black and a second preset with my suggested White Crop settings. It works well with the few image files I tried it on.
After creating the Radial Filter with the suggested settings (-4.00 Exposure, -100 Blacks) hover over the pin, right-click, and select 'Duplicate.' This will apply the settings twice, which should work with any image type and make the area outside the circular crop 100% black (0, 0,0 RGB). You can save the Radial Filter as a new Develop Preset named Circular Crop Black and a second preset with my suggested White Crop settings. It works well with the few image files I tried it on.
Rikk Flohr, Official Rep
- 6243 Posts
- 1390 Reply Likes
As all bitmapped images are essential a rectangular array of pixels bounded by a width and height I am not sure what you hope to accomplish with a circular crop. It will still be a rectangle on the screen and in output.
- 15 Posts
- 1 Reply Like
I set the area outside the circle as transparent. At that point you can overlay it without a black white or black border
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1617 Posts
- 548 Reply Likes
Lightroom doesn't support layers or transparency so you would need to use PS to remove the background area. PS also has an Elliptical Marque tool for making the circular crop. I'm not sure what benefit adding it to LR would provide since you can easily accomplish that objective using the Radial Filter tool as I outlined.
Robert Somrak, Champion
- 438 Posts
- 146 Reply Likes
Circular crop seems like an extremely limited use case with several other options to accomplish it. I think valuable engineering time would be better spent on things that have a wider use. As Rikk stated., the resulting file is still rectangular.
Related Categories
-
Photoshop
- 17861 Conversations
- 4455 Followers
-
Lightroom Classic
- 14874 Conversations
- 3741 Followers
-
Lightroom Mobile
- 1939 Conversations
- 1556 Followers
-
Lightroom Desktop (Cloud-based)
- 2295 Conversations
- 961 Followers
Michael Karchner
Peter Obermeier