Cropping

[Malok]

I have two questions regarding cropping. The first is whether it is better to crop the photo as a Tiff and then save it as a jpg or whether to do the cropping directly with the jpg. I want to keep quality as high as possible.

Secondly, I have my photos printed on a Fuji Frontier printer and it seems like I am always losing some of my image. If I crop it exactly to 8x12 will I still lose some of it? How much and can I compensate for it?

Many thanks!

Malok

[Scottes]

If you crop a JPG then you're going to re-compress the JPG and you will lose some quality. A thread from long ago where some maniacs re-saved a JPG 50 or 80 times kinda proved that not much quality was lost, though. I like TIFFs for the 16-bit aspect, though.

As to the Fuji, if you crop it to 3x2 ratio I'd think that you wouldn't lose anything, as it should resize automatically. I believe that the Frontier prints at 280 dpi (per a Ritz employee), so making the image exactly (8 * 280) x (12 * 280) should mean that you don't lose anything.

Print a scratch one at home that you know contains the entire image and check it when you get your 8x12 from the printer. If they're cropping, complain. You might be able to add a white border and let them crop THAT instead, but it might be tricky to figure out how much of a border to add...

Hmmm... You could waste $8 and make an image but then add a 20-pixel wide black border around it. Then add a 20-pixel wide red border. Then a green one, then blue... Make the whole thing (8 * 280) x (12 * 280) including the borders and that will give you a good idea of what's going on, and it would be pretty easy to show them that they're cropping.

[Malok]

Great ideas Scottes!!! This is very helpful. I have to print around 25 8x12s as well as 10x15's for some stores and galleries I am selling to, but have been going crazy with the crop issues. Armed with your helpful advice, I think I can deal with this now.

Many thanks!!!

Malok