understanding printing my g10 shots

[eclipsechaser]

Hi guys

Having had my g10 for a good few months now I want to start getting a few shots printed. Now please excuse my ignorance here as I have a few questions.

I'm shooting in raw and the superlarge/superfine settings

I have DPP and Grimp and can get access to Adobe CS4.

I want to conceptualise what my photo will look like on printed paper. Not so much the resolution or the colour but the sizing/aspect. Ie when I go into my local printers they offer me paper sizes of 10:8 for example. There are loads more.

Now I assume I can :

1 ask them to fit the whole picture on the paper and keep the aspect ratio ie it will probably have blank areas on the picture around the edges

2 ask them to print the picture with some cropping

3 I could prepare the photo somehow for the paper size.

So I would like to preview how may picture is going to look on a certain paper size/shape with the option of cropping / shrinking to fit etc.
I guess what I want is to setup some paper sizes in some software and then view what the picture will look like with the option to save the picture in that format. I would like to save these paper sizes for future use.

So I just wanted to see what software you lot use and how you use it.

[CJinAustin]

In CS4 just go to image size and make the shortest part of your photo the length of the shortest side you want it to become. Then go to canvas size and make the longest side the length you want it to become, you may or may not need to anchor.

[eclipsechaser]

thanks for your interest.

I did this today. It re-sized the image on screen. Not sure why it would do that as all I want to do is conceptualise what it is going to look like on a printed piece of paper.

A bit like when you use those machines in the printing shop. I'm going to have to keep looking.

[mteetank]

Hello,
Another option in PS is to use the rectangle marquee tool and set the "style" option on the tool bar to fixed ratio. Then set the ratio to your paper size...4x6, 8x10, etc. Once you have made the selection, you can move the selection box around until you like the crop. Then no matter what image size results after cropping, it will fit the paper size that matched your fixed ratio.
regards,
mteetank

[eclipsechaser]

Hello,
Another option in PS is to use the rectangle marquee tool and set the "style" option on the tool bar to fixed ratio. Then set the ratio to your paper size...4x6, 8x10, etc. Once you have made the selection, you can move the selection box around until you like the crop. Then no matter what image size results after cropping, it will fit the paper size that matched your fixed ratio.
regards,
mteetank

great news thanks. I'll give this a go as soon as possible.