Advice to save me poor prints!

[acornwell]

Hi! I'm shooting a family members informal senior portraits on Friday and the only thing I'm worried about is finding out at the last minute that I cannot get the shot to print the way I composed it!!

I'm very new to this and I often find that after I crop or otherwise process images in PS (CS4) I cannot get the entire photo to print in a certain size. My plan right now is to keep plenty of space around the edges of the shots, and to adjust only the saturation, etc. in PS - not cropping.

Any other advice you could offer is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

[private]

What camera do you have. I have the 50D and the photos are a 2:3 ratio. So 4x6, 8x12...Knowing that helps with the composition of your pics. If you want an 8x10, you'll know that you will loose something so, its better to leave yourself with lots of wiggle room.

[acornwell]

I have a Canon Rebel XT - I'll try looking at the menu information or in the book to see if it tells me the ratio...I'm sure it does! Thanks for helping me think through this!

[RustySterling]

Originally Posted by acornwell

I have a Canon Rebel XT - I'll try looking at the menu information or in the book to see if it tells me the ratio...I'm sure it does! Thanks for helping me think through this!

It has the same 2:3 ratio. If you do crop, then crop for a specific size instead of just a freehand crop. That way you'll know pretty much how it will print. I've started using 12x8 to take advantage of the 2:3 ratio of my 40D. But sometimes I want to print 8x10, which is a 4:5 ratio. So if I'm doing that I crop for it.

[Snowdust]

Your are correct. DX sensors straight from camera are 4x6. Cropping to 5X7, you lose a little, and 8x10 you loose the most.

What you could do in advance is take some of your current pictures and apply a 5x7 crop and an 8x10 crop to start to get a feel for how much extra room you need.

[RustySterling]

Originally Posted by Snowdust

Your are correct. DX sensors straight from camera are 4x6. Cropping to 5X7, you lose a little, and 8x10 you loose the most.

What you could do in advance is take some of your current pictures and apply a 5x7 crop and an 8x10 crop to start to get a feel for how much extra room you need.

That's some great advice. I've been shooting for a long time and I kind of know how to frame if I'm aiming for 8x10 or 5x7. So Snowdust's advice is spot on. Get used to how you will see the other formats.

[autofocus]

On a percentage of images you can do some magic in Photoshop by dragging and over cropping the frame and then doing some creative cutting and pasting, and / or some cloning. You can get away with that with various backgrounds, but unfortunately, it can't be done with people.

[acornwell]

Originally Posted by Snowdust

Your are correct. DX sensors straight from camera are 4x6. Cropping to 5X7, you lose a little, and 8x10 you loose the most.

What you could do in advance is take some of your current pictures and apply a 5x7 crop and an 8x10 crop to start to get a feel for how much extra room you need.

This is great! Thanks! Now it's time to show how much of a novice I am...bear with me!

When I import pics from my camera and open them in PS (CS4) the document size automatically defaults to 48x32...and pixel dimensions are 22.8M (3456px x 2304). Is there something I should be doing to get smaller images?

Also, I was just playing with an image and I think I figured out how to crop it to a specific size - it takes away A LOT of the image!! Yowsa!

Thanks for all your help! I'm sure I'll be picking everyone's braing even more in the coming days!

~A

[autofocus]

"....When I import pics from my camera and open them in PS (CS4) the document size automatically defaults to 48x32...and pixel dimensions are 22.8M (3456px x 2304). Is there something I should be doing to get smaller images?"

In it's native state, your camera produces a "perfect" 4 x 6 image as stated above by the rest of the folks. If you sent your file, as is, to your print shop you would get back a 4 x 6 image regardless of what the document size says it is. Depending how you have your camera's resolution set can and will change the file size, but that effects resolution, and not the 4 x 6 dimensions. Being that 4 x 6 is the aspect ratio, you can produce any size enlargement that is a multiple of 4 x 6 without losing any of the image..8 x 12's, 12 x W's, 16 x W's, etc. Obviously, neither 5 x 7, 8 x 10, nor 11 x14's are multiples of the native aspect ratio. With those crops, you will lose some part of the image. Hope this helps, and does not confuse more.

Vinnie

[acornwell]

Vinnie, this helps tremendously! Thanks so much!

I've been playing around with the cropping as well and I feel much better about knowing how to crop for the size I want (if it's not a multiple of 4x6) knowing then that I'll get exactly what I see in my PS screen.

I still have to figure out which size works best for wallets (considering the die cut margins) but I'm already feeling a little better!

Thanks again!