Cropping and printing with smugmug

Unbrok3n

I have a quick question.
I got a couple small prints done just for a test, and I noticed that some images I had cropped in PS were weirdly out of proportion when printed in 4X6. Smugmug obviously cropped them to fit. Is there anything I can do about this? Will the same thing happen with larger prints? Im sorry if this question is asked a lot...

Unbrok3n

was that just a stupid question??

jfriend

Unbrok3n wrote:

I have a quick question.
I got a couple small prints done just for a test, and I noticed that some images I had cropped in PS were weirdly out of proportion when printed in 4X6. Smugmug obviously cropped them to fit. Is there anything I can do about this? Will the same thing happen with larger prints? Im sorry if this question is asked a lot...

When you print a 4x6, you have two choices in Smugmug. You can either crop your image to match the 4x6 aspect ratio or you can print your image with no cropping and get white space on the ends of one dimension (the extra space that doesn't fit the aspect ratio).

As an example, if you started with an image that was 2000 x 2000 pixels (something you had cropped to be square) and you asked to print a 4x6, you would have two options. You could either crop your 2000 x 2000 down to 2000 x 1333 to make it match the shape of a 4x6 or you could specify no cropping and your image would be printed as a 4x4 on 4x6 paper.

The same happens for any size print. It's only an issue if the print size you pick doesn't match the aspect ratio of your photo. To be safe, you should leave some extra space around your image so you have cropping flexibility for any size print you might want. If you pick a print size that matches the aspect ratio perfectly and you decide you want a tighter crop, you can always specify that at print time too.