I have recently came across what I've been told is called the aspect ratio.. When printing 4x6 or 5x7 etc from a photo lab I noticed those photos had been cropped. This is because of the aspect ratio- this is the relationship between the long and short side of your digital SLR sensor, aspect ratio is: 3:2.

I am sure many other people have come across this, I'm curious to know what others do as far as printing. I prefer sending my shots out to get printed as I don't print enough yet to buy/maintain a top quality printer.

So what do all of you do when trying to print 4x6's or 5x7's? I do all my ps work, and set the image size to 5x7 or 4x6 and view it in the photo lab software, but as I said above, the shot gets cropped. I could make it fit, but I would get a white bar on the sides or at the top. Is there another way around this?

What are the different print sizes that would work? Anyone deal with any good photo labs that print these digital camera sizes/for a good price?

I can print 8x12's fine as that fits the aspect ratio.

If anyone has some good back ground information about this subject please let me know. I'm also interested in hearing advice on which sizes work.

Thanks.

You have the same issue that 35mm film photographers always had. Standard photo paper sizes are 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 16x20 -- none of which match exactly. 4x6 is the same ratio. 5x7 is close, and as you noted, 8x12 is right on. My local lab makes 10x15 inch prints, and I make 12x18 and 16x24 inch prints on my Epson printer at home.

6x6 film photographers have whole different set of issues <grin>.

You have two choices:

1. Shoot and print "full frame" and don't worry about the paper size. So you would print 6x9 inches on 8x10 paper, or just get 8x12's, etc. There would be lots of extra white space around your image area.

2. Realize that the aspect ratio of your camera isn't always the best ratio for the image, and crop away. You may end up with something that fits standard paper, or not. The final image could be square, panoramic, 4:5, whatever.

--Ken

I always had my 6x6 images printed as 8x8 or 11x11 - the latter gave me the option of cutting the image down to 8x10 if I wanted. I still remember when 8x12 enlargements from the photo lab (and frames) became available. Before then you had to either rely on the judgment of the photo technician to do the crop for you, or include charts and diagrams of what you wanted along with the negative or slide. Ah, the good old days...

Mike.

I strongly suggest that you look very close at this site:
http://www.theslideprinter.com/ I used to deal with them, 25 years ago, and now here they still are. The prices are just phenomenal for the peerless quality and fast turn-around, and you can order any size from wallet to 44" wide.
Once you do get a larger printer of your own, the images you bought from the slideprinter will give you a standard to aspire to, rather than something you know you can beat.

The uploader for the print shop I use (a local Kodak-associated store) defaults to fitting the entire image into a 4x6 print and leaving white space where necessary. Sometime, that's adequate. However it does offer the option to crop and shift the cropped image within the frame.

So my method is to crop to 4x6 and move the crop appropriately for each image. If that compromises the image too much, the lesser evil is having white borders. On the other hand I don't print a lot of 4x6, that per-image cropping would be tedious.

A nicer solution might be to not crop, and find some software tools or options to use the white border: put the date, or image number, or photo title there.
Andy

Have used Sam's Club in the past for print services and had no issues with cropping.

What worked well is to process all images in PS as a picture package. Thus the images are printed on an 8 x 10 sheet. You have total control of the end results be it two 5x7's, four 4x5's or other combinations, etc.

Now doing my own printing on a Canon IPF 5000 so no need for outside services at this point.

Jim

Thanks to all that replied!

I can see now that the best way to go is to buy my own printer. I need to do more research on printers and how to config/send it through ps.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.


Alaska, thanks for the picture package tip - got any more? Panoak I will check out that site, it looks cool from what I saw of it - always good to find great places like that!

All of your information was great and I appreciate the feedback!

Back then you could also recycle cameras! they were made out of wood!