Cropping & Printing

freehockey

I have a couple of questions about photo cropping and how it affects print sizes when ordering prints.

I have begun to notice that some of the images I've cropped do not appear to be printing as I think they will. When I crop an image, I want it to print exactly the way it looks in the gallery.

Does anyone have any hints or tricks or explanations as to how I can make sure that my images will be printed as they appear in my galleries?

Andy

Set your galleries for Proof Delay - and then before the orders go to the Lab, you can adjust crops as needed - or have no crop. http://www.smugmug.com/help/proof-retouch-replace

Art Scott

The only way I have found to do this is by making sure everything is as I want it before uploading to SM or any other printer........I still work (99.9% of the time) in the 4x5 aspect ratio....by changing my dpi in Photoshop to get as near 8x10 (depending on my camera it between 300 & 450 dpi, always constrain proportions never resample image).....then I crop it as I want to print and I always print again in the 4x5 aspect ratios: 4x5, 8x10, 16x20, 32x40(30x40) , 60x40 and 40x80......I also run my images thru Genuine Fractals (now called Perfect Pixel by OnOne software) before doing my final sharpening .....I uprez for either 32x40 or 40x60 and then any size I want can be made and viewed from only a few inches.....without the uprez then you must take into account that the image MUST be view from some distance and most people judge an image from less than 2 feet.....
The drawback to this the images are too big to upload to MY smugmug pro account.......I just uprezed a 300dpi 10x4 image to 40x20 and 80x40 they came out at 39 and 120MB respectfully.......so I cannot archive on SM

jfriend

freehockey wrote: »

I have a couple of questions about photo cropping and how it affects print sizes when ordering prints.

I have begun to notice that some of the images I've cropped do not appear to be printing as I think they will. When I crop an image, I want it to print exactly the way it looks in the gallery.

Does anyone have any hints or tricks or explanations as to how I can make sure that my images will be printed as they appear in my galleries?

Say you upload an image that is cropped to a 3:2 aspect ratio. You or someone viewing your site decides they want an 8x10 print and orders that. Hmmm, a 3:2 aspect ratio doesn't fit perfectly into an 8x10. The 8x10 is more square than the 3:2.

At that point there are three options:

1) Don't offer print sizes that don't fit your crop exactly so nobody can order anything that doesn't fit perfectly.
2) When printing, clip some off the long edge of the 3:2 print so that the short edge fills the 8" dimension.
3) Let the long edge of your print fill the 10" dimension and the short edge will only be 6.67" with white bands (extra paper) along each edge.

You control whether you do option 1) or not. Smugmug cannot know in advance whether option 2) or 3) is more appropriate for a given situation. It all depends upon both the print and intended use of the print. If it's going in a pre-made 8x10 frame, then the print needs to fill that frame so the buyer probably wants something clipped off the long edge.

If it just has to be about 8x10, but is going in a custom frame and/or the image just can't take any cropping on the long edge, then it's probably best to print it as is with no clipping and require a custom frame. Or, it may be better not to order an 8x10 at all, but instead get one of the pre-made sizes that fits a 3:2 image without clipping (like 8x12).

As Andy said, if you set proof delay, you can preview what the buyer has specified and override it if needed or just make sure the buyer is getting what they likely wanted. I find that lots of buyers just don't even look at the crop and it's often set at some default and automatic value which isn't ideal. I always review and tweak.