Wedding photogs... what size files do you give?

just curious, what do you size your digital negs and what DPI when you give them to your clients?

Full size and a folder with facebook size watermark.
Dpi I leave it at 300 in lighroom.

Ugh, not the DPI junk again. DPI is just an integer field in the image. It has nothing at all to do with how much data you're giving them. 2000x3000 pixels is 2000x3000 pixels at 1 DPI or 9000 DPI. DPI only relates to printing. It's completely arbitrary and based on the print size you want to output, and what you set it to means absolutely nothing as it has no effect on the actual image and can be changed any time by anybody.

So full size huh. 21MP is a large file size. Any wedding photogs downsize their images?

I don't give them to my clients, I sell them, and so they get full size jpegs @ 300ppi.


Yes, there is a difference of me passing over a 300ppi vs a 72ppi, because the client does not know how to change it, and I do not know where they're going to print it, and if they submit it to a magazine(with my authorization) then the mag is going to get a 300ppi, which is usually what they require.

let's keep it simple here. your picture has 5000px. if you print in on 10 inches its 500ppi, if you print in on 20 inches it's 250ppi and if you get a big fcking paper and tell a printer to print it full size than it's going to either print it 10 inches big if set to 500ppi or 20 inches big if set to 250ppi or 50 inches if set to 100ppi. since your clients will most certainly print it on a very strictly sized piece of paper, the ppi value is not important. but it still has the same 5000px however you look at it. and we are not talking about printing here, we are talking about digital data

about downsizing and file size, I'd probably go for A4 300dpi (see, I don't know how much pixels that is, but you can calculate it from the dpi value, but if I knew how much pixels it was, I would divide it with the paper size and get the dpi value). that's certainly the biggest size they'd ever print

3600pixels on the longest side, for consistency between cameras. That gives them a 300ppi 8x12" print, and they can make a good 30" print as well. I also remove camera exif and insert my copyright into the exif and iptc fields using EXIFer. Also 600px watermarked so they can use them online.