Photo size question

mrcoons · August 6, 2006

I am a pro account user with a photo sizing question that I have not been able to find the answer to in the forum or blog.

I recently shot an event where I took a series of group shots (one over 140 people). I wanted this large group shot to be available as an 8x10 but the largest print I have been able to get is 5x7 without losing the edges of the group.

Thie is the photo I started with:

(This photo is in album http://MusicMan.smugmug.com/gallery/1740289/1/86082977)

I have changed the size every which way I could think of using Photoshop Elements 4 and Paint Shop Pro X but have never gotten an 8x10 of the whole image.

I tried adjusting my sizes based on the guidelines I found here: http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2006/01/09/new-minimum-print-resolutions/ but did not have any better luck with them.

I assume that my prep work is the problem here but am at a loss to what to do to correct this. I have only had Photoshop Elements a short amount of time and very far from being proficient with it.

The following screenshot shows the best effort I have been able to mount thus far:

Can anyone suggest something? Thanks.
:dunno

Lyle C · August 6, 2006

Follow the link below. There are several threads on this forum discussing print size and cropping.

http://www.dgrin.com/search.php?searchid=89102

mrcoons · August 6, 2006

Lyle C wrote:

Follow the link below. There are several threads on this forum discussing print size and cropping.

http://www.dgrin.com/search.php?searchid=89102

I went thru all of those Lyle but do not really see anything that helps me any. These posts all seemed to deal with printing on their own printers or at some other print shop. My problem is trying to get a Smugmug 8x10 print. I can print this image with no problems on my printer as an 8x10 using Photoshop Elements or ACDSee but when a customer goes to Smugmug to purchase the image as an 8x10 it gets cropped.

Apparently Smugmug's formula for printing 8x10's is one that I have not been able to find or reproduce.

I do have digital downloads enabled for this image I guess my customer that wants the 8x10 will have to download it and get it printed themselves. Bummer. :bash

pat.kane · August 6, 2006

Easiest option is to print at 8x12 as that is the aspect ratio that fits this image. It is available under Special Prints.

If I needed an 8x10, I'd go into photoshop, reset the width to 10-inches, then go to Canvas size and set that to 8x10. Then it is a matter of cloning in some sky and/or some additional parking lot at the top and bottom of the image.

jfriend · August 6, 2006

Added some sky to make an 8x10 ratio

mrcoons wrote:

I recently shot an event where I took a series of group shots (one over 140 people). I wanted this large group shot to be available as an 8x10 but the largest print I have been able to get is 5x7 without losing the edges of the group.

The easiest option is to go with an 8x12 as was already suggested. But, if you want an 8x10, you will need to add more sky or parking lot to the top or bottom. It's pretty easy to add sky because there's no pattern to match. Here's what I did to add some sky:

Opened the image in CS2 (Elements should work for this too)
Calculate the new pixel height needed for an 8x10 ratio. Simply multiply the current pixel width by 8/10.
Go to Image/Canvas Size, turn off the relative checkbox, select pixels as your units, pick which side you want to add the canvas to, then enter your new pixel height and hit OK. This will add blank pixels on the top of the image.
Now make a rectangular selection at the top of the image. The goal here is to get a selection of sky that is the full width of the image and as many pixels high as you can without getting any of the powerline towers (just plain sky)
When you have this selection, copy it to the clipboard.
Clear the selection
Paste the clipboard. It will create a new layer. You should see a new layer added to the layers palette. You won't see any visible change in your image because the pasted bits are right on top of their old location.
Select the pointer tool and drag from the area where your selection was to move the new layer up until you can see that it has added some sky, but is still overlapping the old sky.
Now select Edit/Transform/Scale. This will give you size handles on the new layer
Drag the top/middle handle up until the new sky has been stretched to fill the newly added canvas and hit Enter to accept this change
Examine the new sky to see if there are any defects in it. If you inadvertently got a little of a powerline tower on the right, you can use the spot healing brush to easily remove it
The new sky may look a tiny bit strange at this point because the noise that was in the sky got scaled. To touch this up, I did a rectangular selection of the newly added sky (make sure you don't get any powerlines again).
Feather this selection by 3 pixels
Then do a gaussian blur on the newly added sky with about a 6 pixel radius (though you can play with radius)
Done

If I were you, I'd probably do this fix on a version of the image that does not have the title in it and then you can put the title in the large portion of sky and everything will be fairly balanced.

Here's what my effort looks like without having the luxury of putting the title up in the sky. I noticed that you added a watermark to your gallery since I grabbed this copy of the image. If you want me to take down this modified copy, just let me know.

In the future, it's a good idea to leave extra room on the long edge of your images if you think you will want to print 8x10s so you can drop off the long edge to get to the 8x10 ratio.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Andy · August 7, 2006

John, excellent - thanks so much!

Andy · August 7, 2006

pat.kane wrote:

Easiest option is to print at 8x12 as that is the aspect ratio that fits this image. It is available under Special Prints.

If I needed an 8x10, I'd go into photoshop, reset the width to 10-inches, then go to Canvas size and set that to 8x10. Then it is a matter of cloning in some sky and/or some additional parking lot at the top and bottom of the image.

jh4wvu · August 7, 2006

Another Option
Another option would be to crop the photo to make it fit the width of an 8 x 10 which would leave white space at the bottom of the canvas. You then could insert the text and maybe add a logo to the bottom. See example below.

Chris

mrcoons · August 7, 2006

jh4wvu wrote:

Another option would be to crop the photo to make it fit the width of an 8 x 10 which would leave white space at the bottom of the canvas. You then could insert the text and maybe add a logo to the bottom. See example below.

Chris

Now this suggestion actually makes sense. Thanks Chris I'll try this.

But I must say that I am still not able to understand why I can print this photo from Photoshop Elements as it is and get an 8x10 but can't using Smugmug.

jfriend · August 7, 2006

Is "No Crop" in Smugmug what you want?

mrcoons wrote:

Now this suggestion actually makes sense. Thanks Chris I'll try this.

But I must say that I am still not able to understand why I can print this photo from Photoshop Elements as it is and get an 8x10 but can't using Smugmug.

You should measure the result you got when you printed from Elements. Chances are it set the long side to 10", but the short side is not 8". This would be the same result you would get with Chris' suggestion.

BTW, you can achieve the same result in Smugmug by just selecting "No Crop" in the shopping cart. This will put the image on an 8x10 piece of paper and the long side will be 10", but the short side will be shorter than 8" with extra white space because of the aspect ratio of your original.

Andy · August 7, 2006

jfriend wrote:

You should measure the result you got when you printed from Elements. Chances are it set the long side to 10", but the short side is not 8". This would be the same result you would get with Chris' suggestion.

Agree.

BTW, you can achieve the same result in Smugmug by just selecting "No Crop" in the shopping cart. This will put the image on an 8x10 piece of paper and the long side will be 10", but the short side will be shorter than 8" with extra white space because of the aspect ratio of your original.

Yes, but the white space will be at top and bottom.

Mr. Coons: 8x12, or the photoshop trickery that John and Pat suggested

mrcoons · August 7, 2006

jfriend wrote:

You should measure the result you got when you printed from Elements. Chances are it set the long side to 10", but the short side is not 8". This would be the same result you would get with Chris' suggestion.

BTW, you can achieve the same result in Smugmug by just selecting "No Crop" in the shopping cart. This will put the image on an 8x10 piece of paper and the long side will be 10", but the short side will be shorter than 8" with extra white space because of the aspect ratio of your original.

Good point John but I am not sure my customers will be patient enough to figure that out. I'm going to give Chris' suggestion a whirl when I get home.

jfriend · August 7, 2006

Sure would be nice if the customer didn't have to define crops

mrcoons wrote:

Good point John but I am not sure my customers will be patient enough to figure that out. I'm going to give Chris' suggestion a whirl when I get home.

This reminds me of a feature request. It would be nice if account holders could preset the crop settings for different sizes rather than making the customer have to figure this out. This would probably be used mostly by pro users, but really is a problem for all users regardless of whether they are trying to make money. Today, the only way the pro can deal with this is to disable the printing of sizes that require expertise in order to set the crop.

Then, in this case, you could just preset the crop for an 8x10 of this image to the no-crop setting so it would just leave some whitespace on either side and preserve all the content and not need for the customer to have to figure this out.

mrcoons · August 7, 2006

Well Chris' suggestion got me where I wanted to be I think. I probably have the canvas too tall but it works.

I added some text to this album to tell my potential customers to email me if they have any special size needs or cannot figure out how to get what they want. Hopefully this will cover things so as not to lose a sale.

Thanks everyone for your assistance.

:

DTMPhotos · August 18, 2006

Sorta related
I regularly take full length portraits of dancers. Usually I'm carefull enough so that I have enough room to be able to satisfy about any print size. In my post processing, I crop to 8x10 ratio (as a 4x6 or 5x7 print will cover the height and I just ensure there's enough side room for framing). Since I shoot against a backdrop, I'm able to clone. I actually set up a photoshop action that does a copy from each side, increases the canvas size, flips the copies, feathers, and then pastes. 99 out of 100 times, it's completely unnoticeable. When you're plowing through 400 shots from a weekends work, PS actions is a savior...

D.

Photo size question

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