Aspect Ratio & Printing

Tom Potter

Hey Guys,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
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I just had my first experience of having a 16 X 20 print made from a digital camera at a photo shop (Wolf / Ritz). Prior to doing so, I attempted cropping at home and<o:p></o:p>
at another place, trying to crop so that my picture would fit on a 16 X 20 paper. I found this to be quite a frustrating task. A young man at Wolf used Microsoft Paint to get the crop just the way I wanted it. The crop came out just the way I wanted, and it's on 16 X 20. When I asked if there was a simple solution to this frustrating task of trying to fit a picture I take onto pretty much whatever size paper I want, he said I should leave some space around the entire desired subject, whenever I take pictures. That way, I will never have the unfortunate need to crop off a part of the scene I'd really prefer to keep. This sounded so simple and makes perfect sense to me.<o:p></o:p>
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So, my question to you folks is: Is there another solution to this problem?<o:p></o:p>
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Thx a lot<o:p></o:p>
Tom<o:p></o:p>

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Tom <o:p></o:p>

mwgrice

I never did any darkroom printing, so I'm not exactly sure what the standard sizes are or used to be. But using the standard smugmug sizes showing up on my site as a guide, your options are to:

• Print in a standard size that matches your aspect ratio. My DSLR has a 2x3 aspect ratio. So assuming I can still do simple division in my head, I can order the 4x6, 12x18, 20x30 and 24x36 prints Smugmug offers without cropping. I am making the assumption that other labs have similar offerings (and I haven't checked).
• Print in a standard size with a border. For instance, for the 16x20 size you could print a 13.33x20 image without cropping. That would leave a border on the short side. Depending on how it looked framed you could carefully crop the border or just leave it.
• Print in a non-standard size. I thought smugmug used to have an option to do this, but I don't see one now so I may be wrong. I think this will tend to be more expensive, and will probably vary from lab to lab.

I'm sure if anybody has any corrections or better suggestions you'll hear about that, too.

One other thing: for some reason your post comes through with all the bulletin board mark-up code (at least for me). Not sure what happened there.