Cropping Question

[erincarter]

Might be a very dumb question but when you first open a photo in photoshop (or whatever program you use for pp) and you crop your image, do you crop your image using the same size ratio as the original image?

Does that make sense? For instance the images taken using my D60 are 12.907" x 8.64" at 300dpi. I have been doing the original cropping during post production using those same ratio's. Is that the correct way to do it?

I don't have a lot of my images printed but if I where to have some printed do I then re-size the image to the size it's going to be printed at?

Thanks,

[autofocus]

Most SLR's produce images with a 2 x 3 aspect ratio (native 4 x 6's for printing) Depending on what end result I'm looking for I will typically crop to standard print sizes for my, or my customer needs. (4x6, 5x7, 8x10, etc) Odd custom sizes can also be printed, but may be somewhat limited to your print service/lab provider. When I'm cropping to improve, or reconfigure an image that will be printed as a proof, I'll always maintain the standard 2x3 aspect ratio by cropping to a 4x6.