Question: Ordering prints and cropping

flyingdutchie · February 18, 2006

Recently i ordered a couple of 4x6 and 8x12 prints and i noticed that some of the pictures were slightly cropped, more than i wanted.

E.g. Take this portrait oriented pic:

and this landscape oriented pic:

Both have my signature in the bottom-right corner.

In the prints, the signature ((C) 2006 Anton Spaans) was partially cut of.
The portrait oriented print showed only the upper half of the signature and the last 's' does not appear entirely.
The landscaped oriented print cut of the last two characters 'ns'.

The digital files from which they are printed are 2000x3008 pixels. This should fit (minus 8 pixels) neatly into a 8x12 or 4x6 crop.

I'm wondering: How much of a picture gets actually cropped when no cropping is really necessary?

Thanks!

DanielB · February 18, 2006

this is a question i've had a long time....

what are the picture sizes that DON"T crop off your image or distort it

never found a list and i think it would be helpful becaues anytime i get an 8x10 or 11x14 it crops some off

Andy · February 18, 2006

DanielB wrote:

this is a question i've had a long time....

what are the picture sizes that DON"T crop off your image or distort it

never found a list and i think it would be helpful becaues anytime i get an 8x10 or 11x14 it crops some off

Daniel - look here:

http://www.smugmug.com/prints/catalog2.mg

And click all the clickable sizes on the top part of that page. Lots of explanations there.

Andy · February 18, 2006

flyingdutchie wrote:

I'm wondering: How much of a picture gets actually cropped when no cropping is really necessary?

Thanks!

Bleed / Trim:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-quality

SmugMug Help wrote:

Bleed/trim

The Frontiers need a bleed/trim area and use a mechanical cutter that, like every mechanical device, has a tolerance (variable accuracy). What this means is you are going to lose a small slice of your print on all four sides.

How much? If the mechanical trimmer were perfectly accurate and consistent (it isn't) adding 38 pixels to the total width of your image would work. EZprints recommends you allow .25 inches (75 pixels) on an 8x10 print to fully allow for worst cases.

What if you can't lose any of your print? Use Photoshop's Canvas Size command (not Image Size!) to add at least 38 pixels to the width and height. They should be pixels you can lose but will not show badly if a few get left by the trimmer.

Anton, send an email to SmugHelp and reference the order number. We'll refund it gladly, and you can re-prep and re-order your files. Reference this post if you like in the email.

The SmugMug Guarantee:
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/our-guarantee.mg

All the best,

flyingdutchie · February 18, 2006

Andy wrote:

Bleed / Trim:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-quality

Anton, send an email to SmugHelp and reference the order number. We'll refund it gladly, and you can re-prep and re-order your files. Reference this post if you like in the email.

The SmugMug Guarantee:
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/our-guarantee.mg

All the best,

Thank you very much, Andy.

The bleed/trim margins is exactly the information that i need!

I will send a mail to SmugmugHelp and get them reprinted when i finished prepping them. Thanks!

The 38 pixels is always 38 pixels, regardless of the actual print size?

flyingdutchie · February 18, 2006

Follow up question about soft-proofing

flyingdutchie wrote:

Thank you very much, Andy.
The bleed/trim margins is exactly the information that i need!

I will send a mail to SmugmugHelp and get them reprinted when i finished prepping them. Thanks!

The 38 pixels is always 38 pixels, regardless of the actual print size?

Reading the help-link Andy posted, i see that upto 3 different printers are used, based on the maximum output size of the prints. However, there is only one soft-proofing profile provided (ezprints.icc). Does this one file work for all three printers?

Andy · February 18, 2006

flyingdutchie wrote:

Reading the help-link Andy posted, i see that upto 3 different printers are used, based on the maximum output size of the prints. However, there is only one soft-proofing profile provided (ezprints.icc). Does this one file work for all three printers?

Yes.

Question: Ordering prints and cropping

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