Can I Print a Cropped Photograph?

[Johnnynf]

I am afraid that I already know the answer to this one, but here goes anyway. I am fairly new to the digital photography world, and recently shot pictures of a HS basketball game using my DRebel. I didn't plan on printing any of them...just creating photo CD's for some of the parents. Stupid me...I didn't even think that some of the parents might want to actually print the pictures later. Some of my shots were a little off center, and some had other framing problems, so I cropped a bunch of them using Photoshop. Keep in mind that I didn't stick to any sort of ratio at all...I just cropped the picture to look the best...regardless of any ratios. So, now a parent wants a print of one of the cropped pictures. I took it to Walgreens last night...got the picture back this morning...and it was seriously messed up. The color was really messed up, and for some reason, the print was super zoomed in on one very small part of the original photo. I wish I could post it, but I don't know how. I didn't look at the pictures until I got to work...so I didn't get to ask them about it, but I am assuming that the problem came from the picture being cropped. So my question is, is this normal? What will happen when you try to print a picture that has been cropped to a funky ratio? Do I have any options? I guess I will just have to get the shots right the first time and not try to crop anything any more.

Thanks for the help!

[Jesper]

What happens when you print a photo that doesn't have the width to height ratio of the print, depends on the printing service. Some will probably crop the photo even more to make it fit. Others maybe stretch the photo in one dimension, which also won't give you the result you want. Strange that also the colors were messed up in your print from Walgreens.

Make sure your digital image has the same ratio as the print, for example 2 : 3 if you're printing it at 4 x 6 inches. In Photoshop Elements you can do Image / Resize / Canvas Size... and choose a size with the correct ratio. It may add white borders to your image. Send this to the print lab - you can clip the white borders off the print later.