Photoworld

flowerinapot

Ordered 6x4 photos received 5x4 and various other size photos - contacted Photoworld and they said that if I wanted 6x4 photos I would have to re-size each one individually (I had over 500 photos). Surely they should have the facilities to re-size or crop the photos like other photo printing companies out there. (However, some of the prints came back at 6x4 so they can obviously do them from the same camera.) There is a note about aspect ratios at the bottom of the order form - but no clear warning - I asked for 6x4 prints, and didn't know what aspect ratio means. All other companies I've used are very clear.

Will not give a refund - only offered a voucher - which is pointless as I don't want to resize 500 photos ,one at a time.

The lesson is - you buy cheap, you buy twice!

G42

flowerinapot wrote: »

The lesson is - you buy cheap, you buy twice!

The lesson is - Read the details on the website before you order prints. What they do is very clearly laid out on their page here which is the first page that you get when you click the Photo Printing menu.http://www.photoworld.co.uk/photo-printing/prints.html

Mr_Toad

flowerinapot wrote: »

Ordered 6x4 photos received 5x4 and various other size photos - contacted Photoworld and they said that if I wanted 6x4 photos I would have to re-size each one individually (I had over 500 photos). Surely they should have the facilities to re-size or crop the photos like other photo printing companies out there. (However, some of the prints came back at 6x4 so they can obviously do them from the same camera.) There is a note about aspect ratios at the bottom of the order form - but no clear warning - I asked for 6x4 prints, and didn't know what aspect ratio means. All other companies I've used are very clear.

Will not give a refund - only offered a voucher - which is pointless as I don't want to resize 500 photos ,one at a time.

The lesson is - you buy cheap, you buy twice!

No the lesson is - if you don't know what your doing you buy twice.

This isn't their fault, they are a photo printing business not a photo editing business. If you don't understand aspect ratios you should have looked it up. The warning is there for a reason.

The pictures will need editing to re-size them properly, if you simply stretch them to fit you lose the aspect ratio, hence the warning, and things get pulled out of shape then you'd be complaining about that.

You don't have to do them one at a time either. Photo editing software like Photoshop can batch re-size images and I'm sure there are free alternatives capable of doing it too.

G42

Mr_Toad wrote: »

You don't have to do them one at a time either. Photo editing software like Photoshop can batch re-size images and I'm sure there are free alternatives capable of doing it too.

That's incorrect. The photos need to be cropped to the 6x4 ratio and that can't be done automatically. Some photos won't even crop without losing important parts of the photo, either at the top or the bottom in which case you either accept a 5x4 print or have black areas at each side of the 6x4 photo.

Mr_Toad

Hmm.. I had to check.

Just had a look in Photoshop and the re-size option enables a re-size to fit option where you can specify the 'fit' as width and height.

I've used this many times to change the size to fit the print size I want and it will batch process as many images as you tell it to.

I've used this to produce both 6x4 and 10x8 from the same image for printing.

From my notes that I made at the time.

For 300dpi prints the sizes are:

5x7 is 2100x1500 pixels
6x4 is 1800x1200 pixels
10x8 is 3000x2400 pixels

Mr_Toad

G42 wrote: »

That's incorrect. The photos need to be cropped to the 6x4 ratio and that can't be done automatically. Some photos won't even crop without losing important parts of the photo, either at the top or the bottom in which case you either accept a 5x4 print or have black areas at each side of the 6x4 photo.

I forgot to comment on your advice to use crop.

Using crop to re-size an image is like telling someone that the best way to lose weight is to chop an arm off!

Crop is great for removing bits of the picture you don't want, like too much sky or if someone wanders into shot they can be removed. A reduction is size is a by product of the crop not the reason for doing it.

If you wish to keep the picture you took then re-size is the option you need.

Figment

There are a number of products that will resize images in a batch, and some will also crop the images if required to the correct aspect ratio but as mentioned above this could result in important bits of the image being cut off.

@ Mr_Toad - whilst I agree in principal, that resize is the way to go, this doesn't work if the aspect ratio of the original image differs from that of the desired target size. It's simply not possible to resize a 10x8 photo to 6x4 without either losing part of the image or having blank space at top/bottom unless you distort it.

G42

Mr_TOAD I'm afraid we're talking about two different things here. I fully understand the process of re-sizing a photo as you you but what we're talking about here is someone who expected to get 6x4 prints from photos taken at a different ratio. There is no way that Photoshop will resize a 5x4 photo to 6x4 without using the crop tool in conjuction with the image size and resolution options. It is physically impossible to do so without distorting the image.

Toxteth_OGrady

G42 wrote: »

Mr_TOAD I'm afraid we're talking about two different things here. I fully understand the process of re-sizing a photo as you you but what we're talking about here is someone who expected to get 6x4 prints from photos taken at a different ratio. There is no way that Photoshop will resize a 5x4 photo to 6x4 without using the crop tool in conjuction with the image size and resolution options. It is physically impossible to do so without distorting the image.

+ 1

If you try to resize a 5 x 4 to 6 x 4 and preserve the aspect ratio the size will be forced to 6 x 4.8 in an image editor.

Mr_Toad

G42 wrote: »

There is no way that Photoshop will resize a 5x4 photo to 6x4 without using the crop tool in conjuction with the image size and resolution options. It is physically impossible to do so without distorting the image.

I was shown a way to do this without cropping. It was a long time ago though. I did a proper Photoshop course at Adobe and can't remember exactly.

It's a combination of constrain proportions and dpi.

Toxteth is right, doing a simple re-size and maintaining the aspect ratio would give you 6 x 4.8 but Photoshop lets you change just about everything and from memory if you then reduce the resolution, change the dpi from 300 to 250ish, you should be able to get 6 x 4 and maintain the aspect ratio without cropping.

This is in the full on version of Photoshop I don't know about the cheaper versions.

I can't try it as I don't have the time at the moment.