5.5

Table Of Contents
133Motion User Guide
Crop a layer in Motion
Selecting the Crop tool activates canvas controls to resize the borders of a layer.
Note: The Crop tool is not available for layers within a 360° environment.
Cropping lets you chop off any of the four edges of a layer to eliminate parts you don’t
want to see in your composition. Common examples of layers you’d want to crop are
video clips with a black line or unwanted vignetting around the edges. The crop operation
can remove these undesirable artifacts. A layer might also be cropped to isolate a single
element of the image.
When you crop an imported image using the Crop tool (which yields the same result as
using the Crop controls in the layers Properties Inspector), only the instance of that file is
cropped. The source image in the Media list is not cropped. To crop the source image, you
must select the layer in the Media list, then use the Crop controls in the Media Inspector.
See Source media controls in Motion.
Note: If you must isolate a more irregularly shaped layer, or you want to create a border of
a specific shape, see Intro to shapes, masks, and paint strokes in Motion.