4:3 vs. 3:2 (Printing for Dummies)

Risky Business

Thanks in advance for your assistance...

Before I sign up for my free trial, I would like to know what image ratio to upload. We live four Provinces away from our families (parents, siblings, etc.). Resizing and e-mailing pictures all the time has become a bit of a chore and I want a reliable backup for my photos.

My main question is that due to the age of my parents and the limited technical abilities of my younger immediate relatives, I would like the photos to be "print ready" without the requirement to crop, etc. So, should I crop all my photos to 3:2 image ratio (from 4:3 out of the camera) before uploading? This seems like an arduous task on my end - argh - this whole 3:2 vs. 4:3 is a real pain. Or should I just leave the cropping up to my family?

Note: I have a Canon S2 IS and it does NOT have the capability to take 3:2 images straight out of the camera.

What do others do when they expect a substantial number of prints being made by those that they share with, i.e. immediate family???

Mike Lane

Risky Business wrote:

Thanks in advance for your assistance...

Before I sign up for my free trial, I would like to know what image ratio to upload. We live four Provinces away from our families (parents, siblings, etc.). Resizing and e-mailing pictures all the time has become a bit of a chore and I want a reliable backup for my photos.

My main question is that due to the age of my parents and the limited technical abilities of my younger immediate relatives, I would like the photos to be "print ready" without the requirement to crop, etc. So, should I crop all my photos to 3:2 image ratio (from 4:3 out of the camera) before uploading? This seems like an arduous task on my end - argh - this whole 3:2 vs. 4:3 is a real pain. Or should I just leave the cropping up to my family?

Note: I have a Canon S2 IS and it does NOT have the capability to take 3:2 images straight out of the camera.

What do others do when they expect a substantial number of prints being made by those that they share with, i.e. immediate family???

My opinion is that you should leave them as 4:3 ratio, EZprints has an option specifically for these prints. Smugmug has put them in a dropdown list called "prints for small cameras" and the sizes in the list are 4xD, 5xD, etc. So you'll be just fine with the 4:3 ratio.

I'm not sure about standard accounts, but with pro accounts you can make it so people don't even have the ability to print out photos in sizes that you don't want them to print (by setting the price to $0.00). If you're not going for a pro account, someone will chime in for the standard and power accounts.

Hope that helps!

Risky Business

Mike Lane wrote:

Smugmug has put them in a dropdown list called "prints for small cameras" and the sizes in the list are 4xD, 5xD, etc. So you'll be just fine with the 4:3 ratio.

Hi Mike - are you saying that the photos will come back from EZPrints as 6"x4.5" rather than 6"x4"? If so, they won't fit standard photo albums with 'fitted' pockets, right? Or are you saying that it alters the image ratio automatically? If so, how, i.e. squishing the 4.5" side to 4" (that would distort the picture), or cropping .5" off?

galla47

Risky Business wrote:

Hi Mike - are you saying that the photos will come back from EZPrints as 6"x4.5" rather than 6"x4"? If so, they won't fit standard photo albums with 'fitted' pockets, right? Or are you saying that it alters the image ratio automatically? If so, how, i.e. squishing the 4.5" side to 4" (that would distort the picture), or cropping .5" off?

Actually, I think the 4xD is actually 4x5.3 or something like that. They are the same height (when viewed in landscape), but a little narrower.

They do end up being a little shorter, but I've been able to put them whereever I've needed.

jfriend

Some thoughts on image aspect ratio, prints and cropping

Risky Business wrote:

Thanks in advance for your assistance...

Before I sign up for my free trial, I would like to know what image ratio to upload. We live four Provinces away from our families (parents, siblings, etc.). Resizing and e-mailing pictures all the time has become a bit of a chore and I want a reliable backup for my photos.

My main question is that due to the age of my parents and the limited technical abilities of my younger immediate relatives, I would like the photos to be "print ready" without the requirement to crop, etc. So, should I crop all my photos to 3:2 image ratio (from 4:3 out of the camera) before uploading? This seems like an arduous task on my end - argh - this whole 3:2 vs. 4:3 is a real pain. Or should I just leave the cropping up to my family?

Note: I have a Canon S2 IS and it does NOT have the capability to take 3:2 images straight out of the camera.

What do others do when they expect a substantial number of prints being made by those that they share with, i.e. immediate family???

Getting the image ratio to line up with the print size is a royal pain for pretty much everyone.

Here's what I would suggest. Ask yourself (or your family members) what size prints you think they are most likely to buy. If what they are most likely to do is to buy 4x6 prints in large quantities, just to have copies of the snapshots in hard copy, then you may want to consider pre-cropping your images to that 3:2 ratio (which lines up perfectly with a 4x6 print with no cropping by the customer). If that's what they are buying that would be the simplest customer experience for them.

If, on the other hand, they are more likely to just buy a few prints or maybe larger sizes or an assortment of sizes, then it's just not possible for you to predict exactly which aspect ratio they will need. In that case, you are better off posting the original, uncropped original because that leaves more image available for future cropping to exactly match an image size. If someone then wants to order an 11x14, they will just have to specify the cropping that matches that ratio while in the smugmug shopping cart. For your 4:3 ratio image, they will have to specify a bit of crop off the longer side to make it fit exactly.

You can see how this experience works yourself by just putting a 4:3 image in your shopping cart and then picking an 11x14 image size. You don't have to actually buy it to see all this.

If you really want to make all this turn-key for non-computer saavy folks so they never need to do any crop specification, then you could upload one gallery that's perfectly sized for 4x6, 6x9 and 8x12 (3:2 ratio) and another that's perfectly sized for 8x10 and 16x20 (4:5 ratio). If you had a pro-account, you could even disable the ability to order the print sizes that need cropping form each gallery so only the zero-crop sizes could be ordered.

If it seems confusing, it is. Someday, I'd like smugmug to let the site owner pre-specify the crops for all available print sizes so it's possible for the customer to just pick the size they want, see a pre-cropped sample and never have to think about a crop, ever.

Risky Business

Thanks for the input, everyone.

jchin

Don't mean to beat this topic over the head ... but I'm still a bit confused.

For my 20D, I think I should use the 3:2; and for my wife's S410, I should use the 4:3 crop. Am I correct or confused?

Thanks again.

Andy

jchin wrote:

Don't mean to beat this topic over the head ... but I'm still a bit confused.

For my 20D, I think I should use the 3:2; and for my wife's S410, I should use the 4:3 crop. Am I correct or confused?

Thanks again.

sounds right to me!

Risky Business

Why the difference?

Baldy

jchin wrote:

Don't mean to beat this topic over the head ... but I'm still a bit confused.

For my 20D, I think I should use the 3:2; and for my wife's S410, I should use the 4:3 crop. Am I correct or confused?

Thanks again.

One of the terrible ironies of this situation is people are most likely to order enlargements — 5x7 and 8x10s — from cameras like the 20D which naturally have a 3:2 ratio. Enlargements don't work too well with 3:2 ratios because so much cropping has to occur.

People are most likely to order 4x6s from 4:3 ratio cameras, which are usually (but not always) consumer cameras. 4x6s don't work so well from that ratio.

cry:cry

I actually crop most of my 20D shots to 4:3 for that reason.

Risky Business

Thanks, Baldy. I get it now...