How to batch-crop film scans in Lightroom Classic

Scanned film comes with borders: the black film rebate, the scanner mask, sometimes a white holder edge. Cropping them off a whole roll is one of the most tedious parts of an analog workflow. Here are both ways to do it.

The manual way

  1. Open the first photo in the Develop module and press R for the crop tool.
  2. Drag the corners just inside the film border. Watch each side separately; scans are rarely centered.
  3. Press Enter, move to the next photo, repeat.
  4. Shortcut for similar frames: crop one photo, then use Settings > Copy Settings with only Crop ticked and paste it onto the rest. This works while the film strip sits identically in every frame, and drifts as soon as it does not.

Budget roughly 20 to 40 seconds per photo. For a 36-exposure roll that is a good half hour of clicking.

The automated way

This is exactly why we built AutoCrop. It detects the border on every photo individually (each side on its own, so off-center scans and mixed border colors work), applies a normal non-destructive Lightroom crop, and skips anything it is not confident about instead of guessing. A roll takes a few minutes, unattended.

If you shoot negatives and convert with Negative Lab Pro: convert first, then crop. Details in the documentation.

More guides: Removing film borders from scans, automatically ยท Documentation