Cropping

Barefoot and Natural

Hi to all the wisdom out there!

If this needs to be moved, please feel free

My question is about cropping. This is about the only thing that really gets me into jumbled mess.
When you are adjusting your pictures to get them ready for print, how exactly do you crop a photo?
Do you use the aspect ratios given to you in PS or do you use "no restrictions"?
I see some pictures posted and think to myself "how is that a printable picture?" If you crop it at a certain ration (8x10, 5x7, 4x6) then naturally when it come to ordering you will have to choose "no-crop" at some point depending on the size you are ordering. Once you choose that, then you have two white borders, but once you trim the borders off, it is not true ordered print size and how do you frame that?

If you choose to crop "free-form", then whe it comes to ordering that print, would you ever have a pictures that is a "true print size"?

Basically, what is the best way to crop a photo and how do you keep the "idea" the photo if you choose to do a "tight" crop?

Thanks in advance....I hope I didn't give anyone a headache :wink

Heather

greenpea

I think there has been a fair bit written about this elsewhere on dgrin, but I thought I would chime in with my .02 anyways.

I've been taking lots of pictures of my students at my daughters pre-school for the parents, and my approach has been to try and keep everything in the 4 X 6 aspect ratio (the same size as a dSLR camera takes). Generally speaking I always keep PS cropping tool set to 4 x 6 (or 6 x 4). I never use no-restriction, too easy for me to get something that won't print without cropping.

Then I make all the images in that gallery priced according to that aspect ratio. That way everything can be purchased (whether its cropped by me or not) without my customers having to crop anything. Although my customers can always crop as they choose when they purchase the pictures, I would rather make it as simple for them as possible.

I suppose I might run into a situation where a different crop size worked better for aesthetic reasons, but if I would definately crop it to a standard print size aspect ratio like 4 x 5.

anwmn1

I ran into this myself. At first I was cropping no restraints to get the image I wanted- I then ran into the issues you described- white borders- matting.

I recently solved both in two different ways.

I shot some senior night shots for a high school and cropped the images to a 4x6, a 5x7, and a 8x10 and posted all of them. I then labled the pictures as the size they were and instructions to order that size. This way the customer does not have to worry about cropping anything or if they do it is at the correct ratio.

For my personal use I also ordered a mat cutter to cut up to 40" mats- $160 and another $30 for a oval and circle cutter up to 30". This way no matter how I crop a picture I can cut my own mat to fit a specific frame (10x10 picture to 11x14, 16x20, or whatever). I can buy mats at cost or in bulk as well as make the mats as elaborate as I want with no added cost. The places I found here in Phoenix all charge $$ per cut. One particular picture I need to mat was going to cost me $50 just in matting. I'll now spend $18 on the mats and cut it myself.