I expect you to blow this off, but I have to say it anyway.

The crop tool is my second-most-used tool (after Levels.)  I use it constantly,
so I've got a lot of experience using it, and that experience is bad.  I do not
like the current crop tool one little bit.  E.g.: why can't I adjust the lower
left corner without also adjusting the other three corners at the same time? 
That's insane.  "The white zone is for loading and unloading only; there is no
resizing in the white zone."

Here's how cropping should work: just like window management.

There should be 10 active regions:

  - 4 corners: dragging here moves that corner (other corners unchanged)
  - 4 edges: dragging here moves that edge (other edges are unchanged)
  - center: dragging here moves the whole box (position changes, not size)
  - outside: accept the crop region

This is how all window managers work.

This is largely how the select tools works.

(Note that in select you drop by clicking outside and in crop, you drop by
clicking inside.)

The crop rectangle itself should be a little thicker, to make it easier to see
where the regions are.  Maybe even bevel it or something.  

Bonus points if you dim the region outside of the rectangle (Photoshop does this.)