cropping and printing

Bend The Light

Hi,

I often print my photos to fit a 10" by 8" mount. I do PP in CS4.

My question is:

Do I work on a photo full size, save it full size, possibly cropped in a RATIO of 10 to 8 but still as large as possible, then print using some sort of "fit tro page" option...

OR

Do I crop my photo first, putting "8in" and "10in" in my dimention boxes, then do my PP and print. There will be no resizing at print.

I'm wondering about quality, sharpness, etc.

Thanks

Art Scott

here is my work flow...raw file comes out of camera at 72dpi ( iam using cs)......so after all is done in LR2 and I go to PSCS to finalize.....clik image......image size (making sure that the only box ticked is the constrain proportions) { I prefer all files to be at 300 dpi to 400 dpi depending on camera and how close to 8x10 this brings me}.....after setting my DPI I clik OK and return to PSCS......now my image is set at 300 dpi...... then I set the crop tool to 8x10 (no dpi) and then I picked the crop I want by moving the crop box around....cropped image is saved it is now an 8x10 at 300 dpi ......I do my test printing at Walmart and this has worked extremely well for me........if like some you want the client to have crop control then do not crop and upload full size files....but since it is my image I want control of the sizes offered and do all of my own cropping to the sizes of my choice.

and since 99% of my work is in the 4x5 aspect ratio I now go to Genuine Fractals and deside how large I want to allow it to go 30 x 40.....60 x 80.....and then I uprez it to that size and save ready for use........

Bend The Light

Art Scott wrote: »

here is my work flow...raw file comes out of camera at 72dpi ( iam using cs)......so after all is done in LR2 and I go to PSCS to finalize.....clik image......image size (making sure that the only box ticked is the constrain proportions) { I prefer all files to be at 300 dpi to 400 dpi depending on camera and how close to 8x10 this brings me}.....after setting my DPI I clik OK and return to PSCS......now my image is set at 300 dpi...... then I set the crop tool to 8x10 (no dpi) and then I picked the crop I want by moving the crop box around....cropped image is saved it is now an 8x10 at 300 dpi ......I do my test printing at Walmart and this has worked extremely well for me........if like some you want the client to have crop control then do not crop and upload full size files....but since it is my image I want control of the sizes offered and do all of my own cropping to the sizes of my choice.

and since 99% of my work is in the 4x5 aspect ratio I now go to Genuine Fractals and deside how large I want to allow it to go 30 x 40.....60 x 80.....and then I uprez it to that size and save ready for use........

Great answer, thanks. One question - where I have emboldened your answer...is that 8 x 10 OR 8in by 10in put in the crop boxes? My understanding is that 8 x 10 just sets the ratio of the sides, whereas 8in by 10in sets the image size to 8x10 inches. Am I right?

Thanks again.