Printing digital photos problem - bits of photo missing

AnotherJoe

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

It was other posters who came talking about supermarkets. I only mentioned Boots

Thanks though, i'll see if i can get in to a proper print store this morning.

So if they alter the aspect ratio then some of the picture is going to get lost anyway? That's going to be a problem then i think because they're a little close up so unless the cropping is very minimal i'm going to end up losing some of the subject.

The only way to alter the aspect ratio without distortion is to print larger and then crop to the right aspect ratio (or to put it another way, to fit into the frame ) .

If you've taken the pictures too close up to allow for space to crop then this problem is not fixable Ina simple way.

Best I can think of is, do the best you can for now, either borders or crop, and then retake the photos later , or get different photo frames.

Ps what you could do is experiment online. Any good photo service, when you are printing to a different aspect ratio than the photo was taken in, will allow you to enlarge and shrink and move the photo about to see which bits you'll have to miss out. So try that and see if it's feasible to get the print you want. If it is, then a photo store can do it also. Some machines in shops will let you do this also.

Johnmcl7

I'd have a look at Photobox - they give you the option to 'shrink to fit', if you choose this option it will put white borders on either side of a 4:3 photo so you get the full photo printed without any stretching or cropping. Other sites may offer a similar option, ideally you're looking for an option to add a border or padding so that it prints the whole photo.

John

[Deleted User]

Don't the machines normally have the option of cropping the photos selectively? You've always got to check your photos if they've come from a phone since it will normally not be in 6x4 ratio.

My camera has a slider which lets you just select the ratio you want - so it stays on 3:2 most of the time

Johnmcl7

The problem with setting in camera cropping is that you'll always lose that additional data whereas if you take it at the camera's native aspect ratio, it's easy enough to crop it back to 3:2 or 16:9 afterwards.

John

AnotherJoe

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

The problem with setting in camera cropping is that you'll always lose that additional data whereas if you take it at the camera's native aspect ratio, it's easy enough to crop it back to 3:2 or 16:9 afterwards.

John

Not if you've done very tight framing in camera it isn't

[Deleted User]

I'd rather frame my photos how I want them to be when I take them than spend ages deciding how to crop them when it comes to printing

AnotherJoe

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I'd rather frame my photos how I want them to be when I take them than spend ages deciding how to crop them when it comes to printing

That would imply spending ages at the picture taking stage instead though, thus taking fewer pictures overall. And also remove choice later. There's a happy medium, frame pretty close but do allow a little extra to give more choice later. If you don't need the choice you can zoom in 5% to 10% which won't take "ages". But if you decide you'd like (or need) a different ratio at print time, you've got that ability, unlike the OP who doesn't.