Benedictine wrote in post #16413354
Thanks for this. So am I right in saying that what I ought to do is when shooting, for example, a group photography to allow plenty of extra space either side of the group? Sorry if this is a bit dumb but I do not want to make the same mistake again.
EXACTLY!
Unfortunately you never know if someone wants to order any specific shot as ...
4x6", which is 2:3 aspect ratio (1:1.5), or
5x7", which is 5:7 aspect ratio (1:1.4), or
8x10, which is 4:5 aspect ratio (1:1.25), or
11x14", which is 11:14 aspect ratio (1:1.27), or
13x19", whieh is 13:19 aspect ratio (1:1.46)
...or some combination of all of the above sizes, for various purposes like giving away to grandma as a wall portrait and to great grandma as a framed shot for her bookshelf. So simply maximize the number of pixels in both directions, to permit you to crop any specific shot to a specific aspect ratio at the time you create a JPG file -- to send to a printer for ONE specific aspect ratio print, while providing a different JPG file for a different aspect ratio print -- so as to eliminate the unpredictability of how the printer would crop a shot to make it fit the paper size!
Most commercial printers 'stretch' one direction of the image and crop off the other direction of the image, so as to not have any white space on the final print. If you do NOT want that, you have to give specific instructions to the printer to fit one direction without cropping off the other direction. I had to do precisely that when ordering a very large print from MPix many years ago, because they originally cropped off the long direction of the image in order to fill the short direction on the print...called them up to tell them they did it wrong the first time, and I did not mind the white space and that I would trim the final print so the entire image is preserved!