Photo Cropping and Printing

[FotoMike]

Okay forgive me if this has already been explored in past posts, but I didn't see anything of this nature in my travels through the forum.

I have been shooting digitally for some time and have been doing more printing in the recent year and I am trying to figure out the cropping issue. I am shooting with a Canon 20D and when I put my photos into PS C3 and crop to 8X10 or 11X14 I lose a lot of the image.

What is the solution here? Do you generally take a photo with this in mind and leave room around the edges to make up for the crop. Doesn't the image lose quality when you crop it down like this?

I'm not doing anything professionally, but I do like to print my images and give them as gifts or hang them and I'm just curious what everyone else's take is on this issue.

Thanks in advance!

[Rentham]

If I specifically need 8x10 or 11x14 ratios, I'll shoot a little loose so I don't lose information in the crop. However, if you are doing it for personal use just print a larger size that maintains your native aspect ratio (12x18 for example).

[Krusty79]

If you get prints with a 2:3 aspect ratio like 4x6, 8x12, 10x15, 12x18, etc., you will not have to crop. If you use any other aspect ratio like 11x14, then you will have to crop. An 8x10 is an 8x12 with two inches cut off, so keep that in mind when you are composing your shots. If you will not be ordering prints with a 2:3 aspect ratio, leave extra room around your subject like Rentham said.

http://www.digicamguides.com/print/aspect-ratio.html (they use 3:2, but it's basically the same as 2:3)

http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2011/...io-simplified/