sizing images for view and printing

Hi all.

I took some shots of my sons cricket match today and want to hand out a disc of all the kids in the team to the parents. Normally if I do this sort of thing I just make them around 1680 pixels or so and leave it at that, but one mother mentioned she wants to print her sons ones out, another even spoke of canvas printing, which got me thinking... How best to release these photos so they can simply take it down to a printer to be done without any cropping occuring (or using their own printer at home)

Do I supply them a large master image at a given aspect ratio and tell them to make sure whatever size they print make sure it's the same aspect? I almost have to guess what size they want, some may want 6*4, others may go 8*10......know what I mean?

Normally at home I can set up my sizes I want to print at and get it as I like. I just want them to be able to print them in the same crops as I do them without cutting an arm or bat for example.

I assume they may also want to stick them on as PC wallpaper too, and obv. everyone prob has different resolution monitors, but that is out of my control.

Do I need to create different sizes, one for printing one for viewing?

What would you all do in this instance?

Thanks for any and all tips.

I'm ready to crop and final edit, but I don't want to do any cropping until I learn some more on the subject.

If you are doing this for no financial reward, then why not let them have full resolution jpegs. Only if I were trying to prevent unauthorised prints would I reduce the size/quality. Let them see how good you can be, not "whats wrong with these?"

Then they can decide how to print them. Or if they cannot sort it out themselves I'm sure you will get a call.

No money, just doing it because I want to. I was shooting my son, so figure I may as well keep on shooting.

They will get high res shots of course, I'm mainly refering to the aspect ratio that most people crop to for printing nowdays. And letting them sort it out themselves knowing less than I do about it, is probably going to end up with dissapointing results, not what I want. I don't really want a handfull of phone calls and emails trying to sort it out after the event, I just want to crop them to what I think works, and have the printer make them the same. No question they will love them, not boasting at all, it's just none of them have any photos of their kids playing...... apart from the lady with her mobile phone photos she took today......... the issue is me trying to do the best I can with the least amount of post "here are your photos" dramas. Even though these are freebies, the pressure is on in my own mind to make them right. I'm even going to take my sons shots to a local printer to make sure the colours are correct before I hand them out, as I have no calibration done to my system.

The last thing I want is someone spending good money printing their kids shot and cutting out half a leg or head. I'd like to know they are sitting on someones wall with all their body parts intact!

I'm thinking if I just make them at an 8* 10 crop at 300 ppi then tell them to print in that ratio, I.E 8*10 4*5 etc, etc. Sound good? or am I not thinking about something I should be?

If it were me, I'd let them sort out any cropping required to meet whatever print sizes they wanted to print at.

Many photographers on here struggle with understanding aspect ratios with regard to printing, so I imagine providing a specific crop and then advising your customers to restrict their prints to the same aspect ratio will largely be met with blank looks.

If you want to go the extra length and provide suitable sizes for printing without cropping, the usual sizes are 6"x4", 7"x5" and A4 (11 1/2"x8 1/4"). This assumes they are printing on a printer at home.

If they want to send them off to a print shop, then who knows what aspect ratios they will require, and I would suggest that in this case the print shop ought to be responsible for providing a solution.

pixelbasher wrote in post #9094869
What would you all do in this instance?

In your situation I wouldn't worry about cropping for different sizes. Seems like it would be a lot of work for nothing.

Your threee most common print sizes will be 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10, with some maybe wanting to do a "full bleed" 8.5x11. Doing a 5x7 print will crop very little (off the longest dimension) and so is closest to your 2:3 sensor aspect ratio. The most severe cropping is done for an 8x10 -- an 8.5x11 "full bleed" is somewhat less cropped, again all at the longest dimension.

One practical is to give them two sizes, a 4x6 uncropped size and an 8x10 crop size. They can use the 4x6 and also print a 5x7 with minimal loss (in the longer dimension). They can use the 8x10 crop and still print an 8.5x11 full bleed, with minimal loss in the shorter dimension.

I'd forget the ppi resolution -- don't try to size for 300 ppi, just crop the images as you wish and save to a reasonably high quality jpeg and it should handle printing at most sizes, although I've heard that some "one hour photo"- type places have balked at large file sizes, so if that is a concern, then yeah you might want to resize and resample to 300 ppi, it's just another step in the workflow.

Thanks everyone, I think I'll just crop them to a 6*4 ratio and be done with it. That way they can then do them at a sized based on that.

Tony, When cropping in PS using a 6*4 ratio (for example) I have to insert a ppi number in the crop as well. It defaults to 300. When you say don't worry about the number, how do I get around this?

Nothing wrong with wanting to do as much as i can before I hand them out to the other parents. You don't need to be paid money to go the extra length. I have my real job for that, this is enjoyable because I'm not charging them
All I want is to be able to tell them that if they get them printed to do so at a certain ratio, then they will come out as viewed on screen. Doesn't sound like a lot of work to me.

pixelbasher wrote in post #9106071
Thanks everyone, I think I'll just crop them to a 6*4 ratio and be done with it. That way they can then do them at a sized based on that.

Tony, When cropping in PS using a 6*4 ratio (for example) I have to insert a ppi number in the crop as well. It defaults to 300. When you say don't worry about the number, how do I get around this?

Your Canon DSLR is already at a 2:3 aspect ratio, which means that a 4x6 print fits, so only crop it if you are doing it for composition, but keep it at the same aspect ratio. To keep it at full resolution, keep the same pixel dimension -- don't do a 4x6" crop at 300 ppi, but either keep the pixel resolution of the original without cropping, or crop at the 2x3 aspect ratio, keep the pixel resolution, and don't mess with the ppi figure.

Then, if you save as a jped at a good resolution you should be able to get a good print at a variety of sizes.

All that being said, I'm not an expert in Photoshop, and there are little ways of tweaking how thing work both in cropping and in the Image/Image size dialog.

The problem is when I do a crop to tighten the image up at the same ratio it wants me to input a ppi figure regardless. If I do an open crop, I.E no particular ratio, that's cool, but I can't seem to get it to crop at a given ratio and not set a ppi figure.

If I'm missing something that has already been written forgive me!

pixelbasher,

From what you have just said I assume you don't use any of the Photoshop versions? In any of them you can leave the ppi at whatever you fancy, just enter the crop ratio, no need either to enter inches, millimetres, miles, 72 ppi, 9000,000 ppi or anything else.

Doing a "free" crop is even easier, leave all the boxes empty and crop to your hearts content.

Ok, after reading your reply I got it sorted now, thanks.

My problem was I was going into the presets to get the ratio, rather than simply typing the figures into the top bar......my bad, dumb mistake.

But hey, if I knew everything, I wouldn't be here bugging you all.

Just 'cause I spent all this money on the software, doesn't mean I know how to use it!

Thats true for all of us my friend!