Beginner's printing question

[luvnphotography]

Hi everyone,

I recently did my very first engagement portrait session (free of charge) for my sister & her fiance. The shoot went fantastic and the pictures came out wonderful!!... until I had some printed...

I edited them in Photoscape, added borders on a few of them, as well as my name "signature" on the very bottom left hand corner of each picture. I printed some off Mpix.com and just got them delivered yesterday. I was SO excited to see the portraits in print!!
The print quality and the colors look fantastic, but my name and the borders... even some of my sister's fiance's head.... were all cut off!!!

What did I do wrong?! Why didn't the printer shrink the photo to the 3.5x5 size and print the WHOLE picture, not chop it??

[Mike367]

Haven't used Mpix.com,but when I order from Adorama there is a point in the ordering process where you specify whether to crop the image (and use all the printable area) or not crop it (which usually leaves some slivers of unprinted paper, depending on the aspect ratio )
If you choose to crop, you can specify exactly how to crop.

You have to keep your eyes open for these options though, because the default is to always crop, dead center.

[luvnphotography]

Thank you so much!!

I didn't notice any cropping options given during the ordering process. I'll have to keep that in mind next time. maybe I'll order a few of the pictures from Adorama and see how they turn out.... then possibly use them every time instead.

Thanks again!!

[OsmosisStudios]

What camera are you using? What size were you editing? What size were you printing?

Even if you have the PERFECT image, with the PERFECT spacing and everything, you're gonna end up with the edges being a little off. It's inevitable.

[luvnphotography]

I'm using a Sony DSC-H1.
The file sizes vary, depending on the amount of editing, but most of them are at least 2 MB (2592 x 1944?). I was trying to print 3.5x5 prints - just enough to see the print quality that mpix.com offered.