Prints are always zoomed or are small

This doesn't relate to any Canon gear but this is my favorite photography forum so hopefully I can get some help here.

I am an amateur photographer with very little to no printing at home experience. I have a Fuji X100s and I also use my iPhone 5 quite a bit for baby shots.

I just bought an Epson XP-600 printer. I use Lightroom 4 to edit my images for my photos taken with my Fuji and I print straight from my iPhone quite often as well using air print.

So both scenarios I cannot get to work properly. Can anyone help me with either?

1. Printing from my iPhone. I snap shots, select the photo, hit print. Select my printer and I'm done. The problem is my photo that prints never comes out looking like it does on the phone. It is always slightly zoomed with all edges of the photo getting chopped. I am using Fuji 4x6" photo paper.

2. Printing from Lightroom 4. I import my photos from my Fuji. I edit them in LR4 and hit print. The print screen comes up and I select my 4x6 paper. The photo is never utilizing the whole 4x6 paper. It is always taking up maybe 2/3 of the paper and it prints with huge white areas around the photo even though my borders I set are minimal. If I hit zoom to fill then it cuts off the edges of the pictures.

Am I just using the wrong size paper or is the aspect ratio wrong or something? Does the fact that I'm cropping mess things up? It just seems like I should be able to print these things as seen on my phone/screen onto the paper and not be missing edges or have it print all tiny surrounded by huge white areas.

The aspect ratio of your photos is not the same as the paper. Consequently, your print will do as you've observed: either "shrink' the photo to "fit" one of the paper dimensions or "enlarge" the photo to fit the other/longer dimension (cropping the parts that "stick out").

The only solutions: 1) you could just print to fill the "shortest" dimension if you want to keep the image as-is 2) you can use Lightroom to crop your images to the 2:3 aspect ratio and so to fill the 4x6 paper 3) you can print on larger paper so the whole image can print and then you can trim the paper accordingly.

It's a common problem. Fortunately you are doing this at home so you can play around until you're happy!

By adding borders you are in fact making it worse. The software is including the borders in its calculations.

I'd suggest you start cropping your images to suit the paper dimensions. The ratio of the sides is more important than the actual sizes in inches or mm. That way you can decide what you want to include in the print, not be dictated to by some idiotic software.

How can I crop in LR4 or my iPhone to make sure i have the proper aspect ratio for the paper? And how do I know what aspect ratio my camera and phone natively shoot at?

Or would it be easier to just buy different paper? This stuff is all so confusing to me.

I just want to print snapshots of my baby to put in an album.

I don't know about cropping in the iPhone.

In Lightroom you choose your aspect ratio in the drop-down list you can open when the crop tool is open in the Develop module. So, decide what print size you want and then pick the aspect ratio that coincides with your desired print size.

So if for example you want to make a 4x6 print that convers the entire paper ("full-bleed") in the list you would choose "2x3/4x6".

Some print sizes would require a "custom" aspect ratio, so look at the list and if what you need is not there, choose "Custom" and fill in the blanks.

As to what aspect ratio your camera is, I don't know. You can figure it out by either "boiling down" the pixel dimensions to something like 4x3, or by dividing the pixel dimensions and comparing the result to dividing one of the aspect ratios. For example, if you had a sensor/pics of 4000x3000 pixels, you can divide 4000/3000 and you'd get 1.333... If then you compare that with the 4:3 aspect ratio and do the division you get 1.333...!

I found out the iPhone is 4:3 which is why it is zooming my pictures and the edges are getting cropped. I don't know a way around this. Is there a 4:3 paper?

My Fuji is set to 3:2 so I don't know why it is showing up as a small rectangle centered in the middle of the 4x6 paper when I print.

Bazinga wrote in post #16241657
I found out the iPhone is 4:3 which is why it is zooming my pictures and the edges are getting cropped. I don't know a way around this. Is there a 4:3 paper?

My Fuji is set to 3:2 so I don't know why it is showing up as a small rectangle centered in the middle of the 4x6 paper when I print.

4:3 is a pretty common aspect ratio for smaller/compact cameras. I have 12x16 prints done from such cameras, the aspect ratio matches, but for other size prints you'll just have to crop to "match".

As to why the Fuji prints are "shrunk down", well that's a function of the print software. The printer should have a "full bleed" option so that a 4x6 print "fills the paper" but you have to nail that option down.