Is it possible to make a preset that makes it crop all my images to 5x7 instead of camera crop?

Question

All my templates for printing are made for 5x7 crops.  So my cameras are all 4x6 crops and I want to import my images and have LR crop to 5x7. I've tried to save a 'preset' to save 5x7 but it doesn't save that crop?  I can save everything else except a default crop.
I know that i can copy and paste those settings after I import, but it would be nice to have all that done when I import to begin with.
Or maybe theres another shortcut to do this?
Thanks for your consideration.
Gary Leif

Answer 1

The Picture Dude wrote:
All my templates for printing are made for 5x7 crops.  So my cameras are all 4x6 crops and I want to import my images and have LR crop to 5x7.
The placement of an image into an image cell within a page layout, does not require you to have cropped the image (in Develop) to that same shape exactly. The same image can be used within different page layouts at varying aspect ratios.
Normally an image is scaled to FIT into its image cell without loss. This means that margins are left inside the image cell, outside the image area, wherever the aspect ratios do not match. However, by highlighting a given cell and checking the option to "zoom to FILL", the image is instead zoomed larger until no margins are seen. In effect, this is a second on-the-fly "crop" which only operates inside this page setup. By setting this option for all the image cells (good idea to save your layout as an updated page preset), you remove the need to crop images specially for usage within those.
If your image is (say) 4:3 - then this "print crop" will need to trim off parts of the image, to get it to 7:5 proportion. But the same would equally be true if you used the Develop crop, instead, to get it to that same proportion.
Benefits: you still can show / export the same image for other uses, at its original 4:3 shape - or any other shape - in parallel. You can "slide" the crop of the image to a better composition, right inside its framing window within a given page layout, interactively (if it is a free-form layout, you may need to hold the Ctrl / Command key so as to do that).
Personally, as a rule, I retain my as-shot aspect ratio for general purposes. I treat that as a distinctive property of each image, as I took it. I don't want to affect my careful general-purpose composition, merely because I may have printed it in a certain way. Printing is to some degree a separate matter: one can either present those whole-image compositions centred generously inside a variable-margin region of the page - or force-frame them tightly to a given shape on the page - as the whim strikes. And then save that as a Print Collection for future re-use.
RP