Ordering photos nightmare.

davev

So the wife says "Order those pics we took on the shootout."

So I go to my galleries, and put 110 photos into the cart.
I click next or something like that and get to the cart where it shows the photos, and what size I am ordering. About half of the photos come up with "Wallet size" Well, I don't want any wallet size. So I go to the top part of the page and try to make all the photos to be non-cropped 6X4's. It won't do it, or it gives me a message about losing the signal/page, I don't know.

Now, I know those are smaller files. 1024 X whatever, something like that.
Any file that I cropped into a panorama, comes up as 4 wallet pics. What's up with that?
Some files I can get the right size, others I have no real options.
Some, when I go to uncrop, will give me a size of 3.5x5, but no other size. (other than wallet)

What kind of magic do I need to do to make this work other than loading my shots to Shutterfly to get them printed.

All I wanted to do was make a proof set to look though.

Somehow it seems like smugmug thinks its knows what I want better than I do. :wxwax

This photo, I'm told is to low of a rez to print.
I would think 1024 on the long side should be enough for a 6X4.



Here's a screen shot of my ordering page.
Why isn't the default setting for prints 6X4, no matter what the rez is?
I don't get it. The wider shots are 1024 on the side, but I can't get the option for a 6X4 print. (cropped or uncropped)



Well, I've now spent about a hour trying to get the right sizes for the photos, to no avail. Another 1/2 hour writing out this post.
I can upload the photos to another site in about 5 minutes, and order the photos in 5 more.
Guess I'll be ordering elsewhere until you change the software for ordering.
It's not worth the trouble.

Mac Write

The fastest way to get help would be to contact help@smugmug.com

richW

Check out the minimum requirements section here:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-quality#minprintres
Looks like you might have to upload a little higher resolution pictures.
Hope this helps...

ivar

davev wrote:

So the wife says "Order those pics we took on the shootout."

So I go to my galleries, and put 110 photos into the cart.
I click next or something like that and get to the cart where it shows the photos, and what size I am ordering. About half of the photos come up with "Wallet size" Well, I don't want any wallet size. So I go to the top part of the page and try to make all the photos to be non-cropped 6X4's. It won't do it, or it gives me a message about losing the signal/page, I don't know.

Now, I know those are smaller files. 1024 X whatever, something like that.
Any file that I cropped into a panorama, comes up as 4 wallet pics. What's up with that?
Some files I can get the right size, others I have no real options.
Some, when I go to uncrop, will give me a size of 3.5x5, but no other size. (other than wallet)

What kind of magic do I need to do to make this work other than loading my shots to Shutterfly to get them printed.

All I wanted to do was make a proof set to look though.

Somehow it seems like smugmug thinks its knows what I want better than I do.

This photo, I'm told is to low of a rez to print.
I would think 1024 on the long side should be enough for a 6X4.



Here's a screen shot of my ordering page.
Why isn't the default setting for prints 6X4, no matter what the rez is?
I don't get it. The wider shots are 1024 on the side, but I can't get the option for a 6X4 print. (cropped or uncropped)



Well, I've now spent about a hour trying to get the right sizes for the photos, to no avail. Another 1/2 hour writing out this post.
I can upload the photos to another site in about 5 minutes, and order the photos in 5 more.
Guess I'll be ordering elsewhere until you change the software for ordering.
It's not worth the trouble.

Hi Dave,

I'm sorry you are having problems, it sounds like you do not meet the minimum res requirements for the prints. Do you have a link to the gallery for me, so I can have a look at it? Thanks.

1024 is wide enough, but do you meet the minimum for height as well? (500px) Usually it defaults to 6x4, but if it doesn't meet the min res req's, it defaults to any size that is printable. Walletsize has the lowest printing requirements.

davev

ivar wrote:

Hi Dave,

I'm sorry you are having problems, it sounds like you do not meet the minimum res requirements for the prints. Do you have a link to the gallery for me, so I can have a look at it? Thanks.

1024 is wide enough, but do you meet the minimum for height as well? (500px) Usually it defaults to 6x4, but if it doesn't meet the min res req's, it defaults to any size that is printable. Walletsize has the lowest printing requirements.

Nope, it didn't meet the min 500 on the short side.
So if I have a pano, 1024 X 230, I can't get a 6 X 4 unless I upload a size
of what, about 2500 X 500? Then smugmug will resize it to fit on a 6 X 4
print, which would bring it down to what I had originally.
Really, isn't that a little ridiculous?
When I click "Uncrop" I would think it would only look at the long side of
the shot, and be able to print it.

Anyway, I'll print them elsewhere.

Thanks for the responses.

marlinspike

davev wrote:

Nope, it didn't meet the min 500 on the short side.
So if I have a pano, 1024 X 230, I can't get a 6 X 4 unless I upload a size
of what, about 2500 X 500? Then smugmug will resize it to fit on a 6 X 4
print, which would bring it down to what I had originally.
Really, isn't that a little ridiculous?
When I click "Uncrop" I would think it would only look at the long side of
the shot, and be able to print it.

Anyway, I'll print them elsewhere.

Thanks for the responses.

230px will give you 57dpi on the short side...not a good image. A trained eye can tell differences in print quality up to about 300dpi, and I really would never go below 70dpi. Why not upload higher resolution images anyways?

Andy

davev wrote:

Nope, it didn't meet the min 500 on the short side.
So if I have a pano, 1024 X 230, I can't get a 6 X 4 unless I upload a size
of what, about 2500 X 500? Then smugmug will resize it to fit on a 6 X 4
print, which would bring it down to what I had originally.
Really, isn't that a little ridiculous?
When I click "Uncrop" I would think it would only look at the long side of
the shot, and be able to print it.

Anyway, I'll print them elsewhere.

Thanks for the responses.

Hi Dave, Ouch - sorry you are unhappy. Believe me, we struggled long and hard to reach the minimum print resolutions that we have now. Unfortunately, you can't order prints unless they meet the minimum sizes:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-quality
BTW, what many folks do for the panos on Smug, is put 2 on one photoshop doc, and print them double on a 8x12, or larger, sheet

davev

marlinspike wrote:

230px will give you 57dpi on the short side...not a good image. A trained eye can tell differences in print quality up to about 300dpi, and I really would never go below 70dpi. Why not upload higher resolution images anyways?

Here's the math I come up with.

1024 divided by 6 inches gives me 170 DPI
If the photo stays in the same proportion, even though there is only 230 pixels,
it is still printed at 170 DPI on the short side. Granted, the short side will only
be 1 3/8 inches high.

So looking up min requirements, the long side for a 6 X 4 is 750 pixels.
That comes to 125 DPI. My photo 1.36 larger than the long side min.

Using your min DPI of 70, and smugmugs min, I would need to make this
shot about 2500x500 pixels. At 70 DPI the print would be 35 inches long.
At 150 DPI the print would be 16 inches long. I'm looking for a 6 inch long print.

In the earlier post, I had said that I just wanted to make
up a proof set of these photos.

So I have a choice, reprocess 40-50 shots to up size them so smugmug can
print them, or, take them somewhere else.

I think it's fine to have a min. size for the longer side, be it 640, 800, 1024,
whatever. But I don't think there needs to be one one the short side.
You are going to get the rez of the longer side when printing anyway,
unless it's cropped.

So here's what I propose.
If the the box is changed to uncropped, make it so the long side min. is
the only requirement. The other places that I have used works in this manner,
and printing panoramas are no problem.

marlinspike

davev wrote:

Here's the math I come up with.

1024 divided by 6 inches gives me 170 DPI
If the photo stays in the same proportion, even though there is only 230 pixels,
it is still printed at 170 DPI on the short side. Granted, the short side will only
be 1 3/8 inches high.

Umm....I think I had misplaced my brain when I made my post. Of course it wouldn't be 57dpi like I said because they don't mess with the aspect ratio of the photo to fill the page if you don't crop it. Now I see what you're saying.
Still though, with smugmug's unlimited storage space I never see a reason to downsize my images.

JFreeman

If you're using photoshop you could create an action that resizes the canvas to 500 pixels high or whatever it would take to make a 4x6 proportion. In other words, add some white or black space to the top and bottom of your image to meet the pixel requirement. Then run a batch action on all your photos.

davev

JFreeman wrote:

If you're using photoshop you could create an action that resizes the canvas to 500 pixels high or whatever it would take to make a 4x6 proportion. In other words, add some white or black space to the top and bottom of your image to meet the pixel requirement. Then run a batch action on all your photos.

Yes, I though of doing something like that also. But of course, I use Photoshop Elements 4 which has no way of recording an action. So I'd have to do them
all individually.