The present invention is a method for manipulating acquired digital images in a computer system, comprising creating a crop cost array for each of a set of input images with a set of associated aspect ratios, wherein the cost crop array operates and is stored on the computer system and wherein each element of the array holds a lowest crop cost of an input image for a predetermined aspect ratio, generating plural possible candidate combinations of aspect ratios for the images, wherein one aspect ratio is generated for each image, creating an arrangement of the images for each candidate combination in which each image is cropped to its associated aspect ratio in the candidate combination, evaluating each possible arrangement using a combination of a crop cost of each of the images at their selected aspect ratio and a measure of an aesthetic quality of the layout arrangement, selecting a layout combination with a lowest combined crop cost and layout evaluation score, cropping each image according to a respective aspect ratio in the selected layout combination and arranging the cropped digital images in the selected layout to produce an automatically formatted output layout page.