The present invention relates to the automated and semi-automated cropping
of electronic images, and in particular to an apparatus and a method of
using an electronic camera to capture and crop such electronic images. An
electronic imaging processing device (1) for cropping an electronic image
comprises an image processing means (6,8), the image processing means
including an electronic processor (6) and firmware and/or software for
processing the electronic image. The device (1) processes the electronic
image to identify one or more features relevant to the composition of the
electronic image, each such feature having one or more compositionally
significant properties from amongst a plurality of different
predetermined compositional properties, and each such feature occupying a
sub-region of the electronic image. Then the device (1) selects one or
more compositional rules from a set of predetermined compositional rules,
based on the relevance of the compositional rule(s) to the
compositionally significant properties of one or more of the identified
features. Then the device (1) determines one or more suitable crop
boundaries by applying one or more of the selected compositional rules.