Comments on: How to Crop Your Digital Photo for Printing

By: Your Camera’s Settings: Aspect Ratio Selector by Digital Photo Secrets

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 06:36:54 +0000

[...] you have a image printed that you shot with a Point and Shoot camera, you’ll likely have the top and bottom parts of your image cropped. This is because DSLR (and film) cameras use a 3:2 ratio where as your P&S camera uses a 4:3 [...]

By: Marilyn

Marilyn — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:23:55 +0000

Thank you…you made my day. I couldn’t figure this problem out and you made it very clear and simple.

By: Beth p

Beth p — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:37:15 +0000

Thanks, this tip nicely explains why my first (and only) experience with a discount photo place turned all my close up pics of Pa’s 90th birthday chopped everyone’s head but about a third. I was sure it was nit my fault and noe I know it wasn’t . Thanks David

By: Kathy Wesserling

Kathy Wesserling — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:46:12 +0000

There are really two factors to cropping for printing – especially, for the cheap local printing services:
1] Aspect ratio (as you explained): My first orders were so frustrating because I had resized for that ratio! First P&S was 1:1.3 / Now, my 50D = 1:1.5 /(6 x 4 or .6667 for 4 x 6) . But, even cropping to the AR, too many prints were positioned incorrectly with images trimmed badly.

2] Actual Print Size: It takes extra time (and ticks me off!), but the printing issues only seem to be resolved if I size them to the exact print size I want before ordering.

You’d think that if the Aspect Ratio was spot-on, that one could then print any size that fit in that range… 6 x 4, 12 x 8, 24 x 16, etc. It may not matter if you’re printing large at a Prolab, but if you’re having it done locally, make sure of how the service handles your file.

A side point – you may have to tell local services NOT to mess with you color profile (another article?)

By: Dwight

Dwight — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:06:16 +0000

My Konica A2 as the options to take photos in several aspect ratios, but my son’s Cannon Sure Shot does not (it was a gift from grandparents). When I go to buy a small P&S camera for myself, I will make sure it has that option. At such high MPixels wasting a little CCD sensor area is no big deal; especially with time saved not cropping.

By: gideon

gideon — Sat, 22 May 2010 14:22:50 +0000

Now I understand why i received back from the shop cropped photos printed from film. it is because of the digital developing machine. is it true?

By: Roberta

Roberta — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:50:02 +0000

Send your photos thru http://www.walmart.com to be printed at the store. do not crop anything. It will give you the option to print what they call true digital. It is printed in the 4:3 aspect ratio. no cropping off the top and bottom, and no ugly white borders. You get the whole photo. The print will be slightly smaller, 4×5.3 I do it all the time, and they look great.

By: Jobey

Jobey — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:41:09 +0000

Thanks David
You always explain stuff so clearly. I always wondered why I had white bars down the side of my photo paper when I printed an image. Always thought the paper was the ‘wrong size’.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:53:55 +0000

This is partially true, if I’m not overlooking something. A 4×6, 6×9, 8×12 print is 3:2, but a 4×5, 5×7 or an 8×10 is not.

By: MCM

MCM — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:30:23 +0000

Thank you so much for explaining this so nicely. I could never understand why, when i THOUGHT i had correctly applied the right canvas size to a photoshop document, that sometimes they stll get cropped by the printer.