I have some questions about dealing with badly cropped pictures and what one should think of when chosing backgrounds for presentations/tutorials.

I have no idea why I haven't asked this before, since I want to know, but if there's another sub that I should ask; let me know.
I didn't choose /r/design_critiques until I actually have something finished to critique on, I hope that's okay!

So I was thinking of making either a tutorial, or presentation, with images but I don't know how to crop/frame them; especially with badly shot pictures.

Here's why I realized it's a good time to ask (worked on a mirror frame):
Mirror and frame: http://ift.tt/2qT6yTX
You can see that I started cleaning up the image (and stopped because I thought of asking) and the upper corner is just blurred blacked.

So my questions are about cropping and background and I'm wondering what you would do and what you would add, ex:
Clean up the image and crop or black blurred frame around the object?

Rotate and crop? http://ift.tt/2qi4Caa

How do you deal with images like these two: http://ift.tt/2qTGlEv

A few years ago I had the same problems and cut out the objects and put them on a background: http://ift.tt/2qhSDJY and http://ift.tt/2qT8YSe
But I'm feeling it's too busy; I don't know.
I obviously wouldn't do it like this: http://ift.tt/2qhRa6i

Is there a go-to neutral design or not so busy background?
Do you change the colours of each and every picture?
I guess it boils down to how does one polish a turd and/or present something in a simple way. I see a lot of nice designs here but they seem to deal with good planning. I'm hoping someone here has dealt with what I'm asking (pretty sure someone has).

I've tried searching for both cropping nice and background for tutorials but I only end up with cropping photos or tutorials on how to make a background.

Thanks!

Great design resource

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) Submitted May 08, 2017 at 04:55PM by Misaria http://ift.tt/2qJZbRx