Depending on your project, you might need to crop hundreds of documents of different shapes and sizes. Capture One CH has a very handy Auto Crop tool that allows you to set up parameters to crop all documents at once.
Conversely, you can choose to use the standard cropping tool and crop each object manually.

Auto Crop

Select the images you wish to crop. It is recommended to create variants of your images so you can keep an untouched Master File for preservation purposes.
Set up your cropping parameters in the Auto Crop menu located in the left tool bar.
Method: the auto cropped method used. Choose between Loose / Bound Material or Film and fixed size if you wish to crop to the largest object for all documents.
Straighten: Choose the edge of the document to be straighten.
We have not been using Pre-Pass and Optimization tools at DSL, as we usually crop images on a dark background that the software easily picks up on.
Triggers: Choose On Crop
Padding: set the amount of padding you wish the crop to have.

Our usual settings are the following :
Method : Loose Material
Straighten : Average
Pre-Pass : None
Optimization : None
Triggers : On Crop
Padding : 50 px

Click on Auto Crop at the bottom of the Auto Crop menu after you have selected the images you wish to crop. While the software is quite powerful in recognizing the edges of the document, you still need to do a round of quality control after using the Auto Crop tool to make sure every document has been cropped properly. With small documents in particular, or when you’re using implements to maintain your document flat, Capture One CH can’t always tell which edge to choose from. You might have to do manual adjustments using the regular cropping tool.

Crop

The crop tool is impacted by the Auto Crop tool settings. For example, if you drag and draw a crop box around an object while having a Straighten setting on, it will automatically straighten your document as it crops. This is very useful if you’re wishing to crop small documents not picked up by the Auto Crop tool.
If you do not wish to straighten while you crop you need to reset your Auto Crop settings. This is particularly important if you want to reduce the size of Preservation Master Files, as pixels need to remain untouched.

Method : Loose Material
Straighten : None
Pre-Pass : None
Optimization : None
Triggers : no selections
Padding : N/A

Crop parameters for Islandora

If a collection is going to Islandora, each image will have to be cropped two ways: one crop for the different Access files and one crop for the Preservation Master File.

For the Access files, crop to edge, with a 50 px padding. The edges should be straighten and the document oriented for readers. You can use the Auto Crop for faster editing.

For the Preservation Master File, crop around the object and the color bar. Do not straighten your image. You can however rotate your document at 90 degrees as it doesn’t alter the pixels. Use the Crop tool and not the Auto Crop – you need to reset your Auto Crop setting to None so it doesn’t straighten as you crop.

Rotation

You can rotate/straighten your document using different tools:

• Shortcuts
  Cmd + option + R = rotate 90 degrees right
  Cmd + option + L = rotate 90 degrees left
• Use the right or left key on the rotation tool bar. It will rotate your document to 90 degrees.
• Use the straightening tool in the tool bar. Just drag and drop your cursor along the edge you wish to straighten (see below)