cropped images not printing fully

[gillian cross]

I have a Canon Powershot S50 digital camara, and am using Canon Utilities ZoomBrowser Ex 5.6 (ver 5.6.0.27).

I am feeling quite desperate and angry at the money I have spent in printing in excess of 350 photographs which I have specially trimmed to get the best fit picture/image. Only to notice that these trimmed images do not match the full image as displayed in ZoomBrowser. :(

I had copied the saved image to CD as .JPG files and used a commercial photolab. Please advise me. Is there something more I need to do to ensure that the displayed image in ZoomBrowser is the photograph I get at the end of the day.

[snowrdr]

If the problem is that the prints don't contain everything from edge to edge that you see on your computer, then the solution is to crop your pictures to the same ratio as the print size you have selected.
For example, for 4x6 prints, you should use a cropping ratio of 2:3
For 5x7 prints, crop at a 5:7 ratio
For 8x10 prints, use a a ratio of 4:5, etc.

Your S50's ratio is 4:3, so for any of the above mentioned print sizes, you will need to crop your pictures according to the print size you want. :D

Using Photoshop Elements, I crop my shots with the correct ratio and then resize the picture to the print size I want before printing.

[estrugo]

Are the proportions of the images, the same as the paper? usually I got this when printing in commercial photlabs, as they have pre-cutted paper (10 x 15 cm) this is a 3:2 proportion, while the pics (in most cases) are 4:3 proportion

This way I always got a white stripe in the left and right sides of the printed picture

[gillian cross]

Dave

Thank you so much for your prompt response. Sounds like good advise - but I am afraid I don't quite understand. I am a novice and have tried to use the help facility to understand what to do next but to no avail. When accessing the photo in Edit to trim it I can see that I need to enter size of trimming area but I don't know what to enter in these boxes.....

[estrugo]

Maybe this can help (I hope)

If you have a 800 x 600 image, it's a 4:3 ratio (divide 800/600 =1.33333; divide 4/3=1.3333)

If you want to print 6x4 inches, this is a 3:2 ratio (divide 6/4=1.5; divide 3/2=1.5)

So if you want your picture to be the exact match for your printing size, multiply the smallest side of your picture, by the ratio, example 600x1.5=900, so your "perfect" match for the paper size is 600x900 (is just an example, do it with your own numbers)

Now as you want to crop your images, I can suggest an easy way, but I'm not expert... use Microsoft Office Picture Manager, then you have the crop option, as you move the crop area, it's displayed at the right the new size of your image, just match it to the numbers you calculated from the exercise avobe, and you are set...

[snowrdr]

Dave

Thank you so much for your prompt response. Sounds like good advise - but I am afraid I don't quite understand. I am a novice and have tried to use the help facility to understand what to do next but to no avail. When accessing the photo in Edit to trim it I can see that I need to enter size of trimming area but I don't know what to enter in these boxes.....

For a 4x6 print which uses a 2:3 ratio, you would use width and height numbers that equal that ratio. So a full size image from your S50 is 2592x1944 pixels. If you want a 4x6 print and also want the full width of 2592 pixels, the height would have to be 1728 pixels to keep the ratio, for example.

[Cindi]

Why isn't the cropping as simple as just choosing 4 x 6 when cropping your picture? You keep talking about ratio's. I can't say as I've seen the ratio option before. Maybe I'm missing something here.

[nwyman]

Why isn't the cropping as simple as just choosing 4 x 6 when cropping your picture? You keep talking about ratio's. I can't say as I've seen the ratio option before. Maybe I'm missing something here.

I think the ratio option is part of Photoshop - with the printer preferences setup stuff - which I try to avoid, not being mathematical.

When I'm in a rush, I tend to use Picasa2, which is a free photo-editing program, downloadable from Google.com.

It gives you the option of cropping to fit, or shrinking to fit. Shrinking gives you the entire shot, but shrunk down to fit the size paper you are using - and that is when you get the white borders on either end.
Cropping, on the other hand, will tend to give you a bit of loss on the edges of your shot.

You can choose the crop to size (4x6, 5x7, etc.), but many times, the picture you've taken doesn't fit comfortably into those specs. E.G., if you have taken a picture of a square quilt - it's never going to fit correctly into a 4x6 dimension.

We recently did a quilt documentation study in our county and ran into this exact problem. The person in charge took the photos to a Ritz Camera for developement, and they were unable to do what we wanted. We also got 4x6 prints, but it didn't include the entire quilt.

I understand just enough to realize what the problem is, but don't know exactly how to go about fixing it.
I ended up printing the documentation out at home, with my Canon pixma printer, using the "shrink to fit" option.

It was fine for our purposes, but I would like to understand the ration better, so as to see if I could have done anything differently.

[catsith]

i use cs2, and even though i crop, the image resizes itself , making the image bigger, not the photo smaller. I print a lot of my own, and i can print bordered and borderless, because if i send my photos to the lab, they print borderless, and so i loose some of the photo. On my printer at home, i can choose bordered, and then all of the image is in the picture, with a white border around it. I am thinking that to change the size of the photo you would need to change the canvas size, but i could be mistaken. It's just that i did this with a photo i had created a border around, and couldn't find a photo frame that would fit it, so i changed the canvas size so that it printed it to fit my frame. However, i printed that on my printer, but borderless, so probably would have come back the same from the lab. Hope that helps, cause i am confused by the ratio stuff too.

[Cindi]

Thanks Nancy, I better understand it a little bit better. From what I'm getting you have to know the ratio thing in order to get the size picture you want w/o the borders around your picture. Is that a correct assumption. I just bought Elements 4.0 so the ratio thing must be in there somewhere. I just haven't gotten that far.

[estrugo]

The ratio is the relation between the width and height of an image

Example 1600 x 1200 has a ratio of 4:3

Where the 4:3 come from?, first, take out the zeros; divide the remaining numbers (16 and 12) by 2, so many times until you have a number that can't be divided more (with no decimals), this leads you to the 4 and 3, get it?

If you divide one more time, you will have 2:1.5, which is not a NON-DECIMAL number, so you have to stop dividing ;-)

It's the same for paper sizes

Example 6 x 4 has a ratio of 3:2 (the ratio comes from the same explanation above)

So, you can't fit different ratios, without having some image crop, as the proportions are different

Hope this makes things a little more clear

[estrugo]

This is one big difference between Point & Shoots, and DSLRs; the P&S usually have 4:3 ratios (need cropping for a full paper size print without borders) while the DSLRs have 3:2 ratios, so no cropping needed... Well at least for the classic 6 x 4 picture :-P

[Cindi]

Thanks Emerson, the fog is starting to lift! LOL!!!

[nwyman]

all anyone has to do is mention "divide" and "ratio" and my brain cells (what's left of them) go into a tailspin. Cindi sees through fog to clarity; I see a deepening morass.<VBG>

Nancy

[Cindi]

all anyone has to do is mention "divide" and "ratio" and my brain cells (what's left of them) go into a tailspin. Cindi sees through fog to clarity; I see a deepening morass.<VBG>

Nancy

LOL! A hobby shouldn't be this difficult should it Nancy?

[nwyman]

LOL! A hobby shouldn't be this difficult should it Nancy?

I suspect I'm making it more difficult than it needs to be. But I had absolutely NO idea of what I was getting into a few years ago, when I bought my first compact camera.
Let's not even mention hyperfocal distance.
And all those markings on DSLR lenses, having to do with infinity.

[spur]

If you want it real easy (no division:)) use Paint Shop Pro X. When you want to crop an image you can select from all the popular print sizes. You can drag the corners to expand or reduce what you want and the crop box will stay the correct ratio for you. It will even tell you the resolution as you change the size of the crop box.