Help with prints and photoshop

[Tracy Hicks]

I feel like a dork..... I dont print many of my photos, least I didnt. I had so many I've been meaning to print so yesterday I picked out a few to have printed at smugmug. Well I know that there is some cropping involved between making it a 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10 but.....

Does anyone know what size I should make the print in photoshop to get "what you see is what you get" in the different sizes? and maybe an easy way to do that?

I had to crop some pics so bad I canceled half my order because I didnt like them. I have the orignal prints so I can start over and save these but I'm not sure on the sizes.

Thanks -T

Oh btw I shoot a Nikon D200... I remember an older camera I had you could set this in the camera and it would take different sizes. Does the D200 do that?

[rott]

Easiest way to see exactly what you'll get is to use the crop tool. It's third down on the right column of the tools if I remember right. You'll get a top bar where you can set your width and height and you'll be constrained to those proportions as you drag the crop over your image.

Hope that helps!

[Daniel Bates]

I also use the rectangular selection mode with the aspect ratio fixed.

[Tracy Hicks]

Ahhh I see now... thanks. I guess I need to play around with it a bit. Re-thinking the shot before I shoot it. 8x10 really cuts alot off the sides... need to remember to leave some room out there while looking through the camera.

[epoh]

It's always a good idea to leave space around any shot you plan on printing. It's a lot easier to cut out blank space and crop down, than to figure out which arm to cut off. :)

[rott]

Yeah I need to get used to that myself...and get some more megapixels.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by epoh

It's always a good idea to leave space around any shot you plan on printing. It's a lot easier to cut out blank space and crop down, than to figure out which arm to cut off. :)

It's even easier to just print the full frame and not worry about the paper dimension. I think cropping should be done to enhance the image not to fit a specific size of paper.

[Tracy Hicks]

Originally Posted by johnastovall

It's even easier to just print the full frame and not worry about the paper dimension. I think cropping should be done to enhance the image not to fit a specific size of paper.

Do you mean have the whole image printed on larger paper and make a custom matte for it? That way you get your whole image you composed in your viewfinder? I might end up doing that on a couple of my favorite shots of my son where I have no room to crop.

You'd think with the big computers in cameras now they could help us out a bit by adding a button to pick what size we are going to print. Even though sometimes I print one 5x7 and one 8x10. Ah well least I can now see what I'm going to get at the lab... those hacks always crop in the middle. I can now make it so easy for them "even a caveman can do it"

[epoh]

Originally Posted by johnastovall

It's even easier to just print the full frame and not worry about the paper dimension. I think cropping should be done to enhance the image not to fit a specific size of paper.

Well that's the ideal, of course. In reality you sometimes have to accomodate your customers who want a 5x7 or 8x10.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by Tracer40

Do you mean have the whole image printed on larger paper and make a custom matte for it? That way you get your whole image you composed in your viewfinder? I might end up doing that on a couple of my favorite shots of my son where I have no room to crop.

You'd think with the big computers in cameras now they could help us out a bit by adding a button to pick what size we are going to print. Even though sometimes I print one 5x7 and one 8x10. Ah well least I can now see what I'm going to get at the lab... those hacks always crop in the middle. I can now make it so easy for them "even a caveman can do it"

Yes full frame and if you want it matted a custom matte. I don't want a button for my print aspect ration and size that's what cropping functions are for. But I don't use a lab either but print my own. I know what I want a lab doesn't.

Look at the prints of Diane Arbus to show the full frame she included the edge of the film in the print. Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1967
Copyright © 1969 The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by epoh

Well that's the ideal, of course. In reality you sometimes have to accomodate your customers who want a 5x7 or 8x10.

Perhaps you could try to educate your customers that those sizes may not be the desirable from an aesthetic view.

[billbunton]

Originally Posted by epoh

Well that's the ideal, of course. In reality you sometimes have to accomodate your customers who want a 5x7 or 8x10.

Depends somewhat on the customer base. When I sell landscape/nature photographs, the customer can select the size of the paper. I select the crop, and the actual image will be printed with whatever borders are required to fit the crop on that size of paper. Yeah, that means a custom mat, but then again I do have a mat cutter :-)