Absolute Print Sizes

edknight

The prints and matting I do at home include a 1/4" border (1/2" at the bottom) of white print paper showing between the mat window and the print with my signature in the bottom border. With the 1/4" border, actual inked dimensions are critical as small variations are very apparent when matted.

Is there a way to obtain a specific inked area size when ordering a large print? For example, if I want a print for a 22x33 mat window (landscape inked area 21.25x32.5) , can I upload a 2:3 file to be printed on 24x36 paper that has appropriately-sized white margins and avoid a small expansion due to your borderless printing? Would selecting the "no cropping" option do this or can somehow I turn off borderless?

Another option would be to know how much the print is expanded due to borderless printing (eg ~1/8" in each dimension)? If I know this, I could work out the inked/white proportions of the file I send you.

Thanks

jfriend

It is virtually impossible to get exact bordered prints through Smugmug's current lab. Yes, you can put your own border on, try to calculate it all out for the exact size you are making, but there is no guarantee that it will come out good because they have tolerances. One big reason labs love borderless prints is they don't have to have the paper in the print perfectly straight or align the page perfectly straight when they trim it. With a borderless print, all they have to do is get the exact final dimension and have it rectangular, you generally won't know if they took 1% off one edge and 3% off the other edge. With a bordered print, you would see that difference right away.

Further, there is no way with Smugmug's current lab to tell them not to expand your print slightly before printing it which makes it even harder to calculate out how to do a border.

When I need a bordered print, I either print it myself or I order it from someone who explicitly supports bordered prints because then you can get an exact dimension as part of their process.

As an example, I had a print that needed to go in a frame. The image was so closely cropped (at shoot time, not in post processing) that I couldn't afford to lose more than a smidge off one edge of the print. I wanted to get a bordered print where the image size would be just a smidge larger than the carefully measured opening in the frame and the border would help hold the print in place in the frame. I concluded that it was just not possible to do that with Smugmug printing and, at best, it would have taken several iterations of experiementation and at worst, there wouldn't have been enough consistency from one print to the next to get the accuracy I wanted. With multiple days between iterations and print cost and shipping on each iteration, it didn't make sense for me to do it that way. At home, I can just use oversize paper, tell Lightroom exactly what size print I want on the paper and then trim the paper to fit perfectly in the frame. I've never found a way to do that with Smugmug's lab.

This is not so much an indictment of the lab, just a feature that they don't have or Smugmug doesn't offer as it's more of a specialty requirement (exact size printing on oversize paper).

edknight

Thanks, John, that's what I feared. Will start looking for on-line labs as I live far from any large towns. I'm open to recommendations if you have any.

jfriend wrote:

When I need a bordered print, I either print it myself or I order it from someone who explicitly supports bordered prints because then you can get an exact dimension as part of their process.

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jfriend

edknight wrote:

Thanks, John, that's what I feared. Will start looking for on-line labs as I live far from any large towns. I'm open to recommendations if you have any.

MPIX allows you to order with borders and is a highly regarded print lab.

edknight

Thanks

jfriend wrote:

MPIX allows you to order with borders and is a highly regarded print lab.