want to crop a photo

Hi LobosCarol,

welcome to the Apple (user-to-user) Community :-)

Re: want to crop a photo : Any way to "photoshop" a picture with tools built in to this computer?

The "Photos" app has some tools, also the "Preview" app ... (also can crop using screen shot, but may lower-res.)

(.. wondering which MacOS version you are using.)

Eg: Here's one way to crop a photo:

Open photo in Preview

Choose File > Duplicate (so original stays intact)

Using the duplicate copy: Press and drag to make a rectangular selection

Drag the selection's "corner dots" in or out, so the section you want to keep is within the selection.

When ready, choose "Tools" in the top menu and Click "Crop" (down near the bottom of the list).

Save the file with a different filename (so you will have both the original, and the cropped version)

Preview User Guide for Mac - Apple Support or Photos User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

or

Take a screenshot on your Mac - Apple Support

How to quickly capture a portion of the screen (eg: crop from photo open on desktop) NB: may be lower-res

1. Press and hold these three keys together: Shift, Command, and 4.
2. Drag the crosshair  to select the area of the screen to capture. 
3. To move the selection, press and hold Space bar while dragging. 
4. To cancel taking the screenshot, press the Esc (Escape) key.

All the best :-)

Photoshop and Photos have been designed for different purposes. Each has different strength.

• Photos for Mac has four main functions:

1. 1. It is a DAM (Digital Asset Manager) for photos and videos. The media files are copied into a relational database (the Photos Library) and Photos is keeping track of the relations between the different edited versions of our photos and videos and the editing history, the albums, the folders, the metadata, the adjustments applied. Artificial intelligence is used to scan the library and recognize the objects and people, the locations, understand the scenes and this information is used to help us retrieve our photos. We can add metadata to describe the role of the photo - what this photo means to us by adding titles, captions, keywords, and group related photos using albums and folders.
   2. Photos has a built-in photo editor to touch up and develop our photos to perfection. It helps us to improve the photos - noise reduction, sharpening, remove blemishes, straightening the photos, improve the lighting , the colors, the perspective. The Photos.app is photo centric - we can turn a photo into a better version, but Photos has nearly no support for graphics composition - combining parts of different photos into one (faking photos). This is keeping the graphical user interface clean and simple by focussing on the development of photos. Only recently we can extract the objects to remove the background, as pointed out by Mark. Graphics composition is the strength of Photoshop or Pixelmator or Affinity Photos.
   3. Photos is a syncing service. It can store the library in iCloud Photos and keep the Photos Libraries identical and perfectly in sync across all your Apple devices. We can use hands-off to start editing a photo on one device and continue on another. And the look and feel of Photos is very similar across all our Apple devices.
   4. Photos has a lot of support for sharing photos in different ways.

• Photoshop and other photo editors (Pixelmator, Affinity, Graphic Converter eg.): Quite a few photo editors are combing tools for editing the photos (developing the photos and touching them up) with tools for graphics composition for combining several photos one. Generally the dedicated photo editors are much more powerful than Photos, but Photos is nicely covering the basic tools and I do not often have to use the more advanced editor.

When I need to combine to photos into one I am usually using Graphic Converter, after extracting the object from a photo in Photos on macOS 13 Ventura. With Graphic Converter I can easily paste the extracted object into a different image.

A basic graphic composition can also be done in the free tools that are coming with any Mac: For example, Preview allows us to paste parts of a different image from the clipboard into another document.

Or, we can overlay parts of images and create a collage with Pages or Keynote. Pages and Keynote offer several shapes to crop images as a heart or star, etc.

If this is somewhat you want to do:

the answer is no. To add parts of one photo to another you'll need an image editor that handles layers like Photoshop Elements, Gimp, Affinity Photos, GraphicConverter, etc. The two above were done with Photoshop Elements (PSE).

However, you can remove items from a photo with Photos' Retouch tool:

You don't say what version of macOS your MacBook Air is running, but assuming it is reasonably up to date:

The Preview application can crop a freestanding photo file quickly.

The Photos application has a crop tool inside its edit tool for photos kept inside its library.

Both applications come with the operating system. Either has more capabilities than just cropping. Neither comes anywhere near the "Photoshop" level.

Open Source Software "The GIMP" GNU Image Manipulation Program (version for Mac) can be downloaded for free. Have often found it useful when Photoshop isn't available.

Tools:

Thank you kindly for your reply, LobosCarol, and for letting us know we helped. Cheers :-)