Darkroom: Crop

When adding new music to your library, digitally-produced PDF files are certainly best. They feature the highest quality and lowest file sizes. For paper scores, a flatbed scanner is a decent option for archival digitization: you’ll get full control over color, resolution, and more.

But, like they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. If you need to digitize a score on the go, Darkroom is the way to do it. It lets you snap photos with your iPad’s camera or import images from your device’s Photos library, then turn them into a PDF in minutes. It’s a feature that’s been around for a while now, but with forScore 10 it takes a big leap forward with several major improvements. Today we’ll take a quick look at cropping, a feature that lets you remove the edges of a photo and get the best possible view of a page.

After adding a photo to your workspace, tap on it to see a larger preview, then tap the Crop icon at the bottom of the screen (the second-to-last icon). First, forScore will scan your image to try and find the edges of your page. If it can, it’ll set the crop box to the area it thinks you’ll want to keep. Otherwise, it’ll start you off with a 10% margin on each side. Drag the edges or corners of the crop box to fit your page, then tap “Crop” in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Anything outside of the selected area will be removed, accounting for shifted rotation and perspective if needed.

It’s a quick and easy way of getting great results, especially for files you’ll only be using temporarily. That’s just the start of what’s new in Darkroom in forScore 10, though, so be sure to check back next week for more!