Why do the tops get chopped off my digital photos?

SammyD_2

Just got my digital photos back from Tesco...although they all looked fine on my camera (and on my PC), the top 10% of each image has been missed off on the printing, meaning lots of missing heads.

I assume this is something to do with a setting on my camera meaning that it is set to a size that is not 6x4 prints, but cannot find anything in the instruction manual about this (it is an Olympus). When I print images out at home having resized, it "stretches" the image to fit the size I selected meaning long faces on all the prints.

But I am sure that I have had previous prints made that did not have this problem - any ideas? Tesco were less than helpful, but did refund the cost of the photos.

Mr_Skint_2

I would say when they were developed they set the printer to the wrong
size (print layout) and ruined your piccys.

Rex_Mundi

Digital picture sizes have a normal aspect ratio of 3:4. as opposed to 35mm film which has an aspect ratio of 2:3. This can mean that if the photo shop is set up for 35mm film, your pics from a digital camera will be cropped.

When you select a company for developing. Makes sure they offer prints for digital size. You wont have this problem again.

tomthebomb

QUOTE=tomthebomb]A little something that you are not warned about when submitting digital pictures for printing

Having submitted nearly 200 photos to a photo lab for printing I discovered an important and little-known fact about most digital cameras - they create pictures with different photo dimensions, and thus a different aspect ratio, than 35mm film cameras. Your digital camera pictures are taller than those you take or used to take with your film camera. This makes a difference to what eventually ends up in your prints and you should keep it in mind when composing your digital photos. To fit your digital photo into these dimensions, something has to be cropped away, and if you framed your photo tightly to maximize the impact of the subject, you may lose something you wanted in the photo.

The dimensions of standard 35mm film are 36 x 24mm, which translates into an aspect ratio of 3:2. In contrast, typical digital camera photo dimensions range from 640 x 480 pixels, 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 960 for standard 1 megapixel (mp) cameras, to 1600 x 1200 for 2mp cameras, 2048 x 1536 for 3mp cameras, 2272 x 1704 for 4mp camaras, and 2560 x 1920 for 5mp cameras. All of these dimensions translate into an aspect ratio of 4:3. Digital SLRs have a similar aspect ratio to 35mm SLRs, so this isn't an issue.

I have used Klick, Jessops and Morrisons and none have any warning to the consumer that inappropriate cropping may occur. When I pointed out this anomaly to the staff at Klick, the manager was very concerned and interested. She called her customer services department for some technical advice on the matter and was told that 'digital pictures are square but have to be turned into a rectangle for printing'. Neither of us was amused or impressed by this patronising explanation. Jessops, who should know better, told me that I would have to used their computer terminal to crop each image. I don't know about you, but cropping 179 pictures before printing seems a little tedious.

Bonusprint (http://www.bonusprint.co.uk/) offer digital sizes and standard sizes yet none of the above do. This is because it is more convenient for the high street vendors to process all pictures through, what is effectively, a 35mm lab.[/QUOTE]


HOPE THIS HELPS.

EvilMonkey

SammyD,

All the explanations so far are right on the money, but photo printers are beginning to wake up to the idea (slowly....) Online printers like https://www.colourmailer.com (and https://www.photobox.com I think) have been offering digi sizes for years now and colour mailer even shows you what the pic will look like and gives you a choice if you want the "wrong size" (IE crop the pic of have white borders...)

I got some photo's developed at morissons at the weekend (I needed them in a rush) and forgot to ask. They oddly cropped about a cm off all edges, but when I took them back told me they did have a digital setting on their printer which avoids crops or borders. (Why this wasn't offered automatically to someone bring pics in on a memory card I'm nor sure....). I'm not sure I'd really recommend them though as the pic quality was awful (really blew out the highlights).

Personally I'll stick with colourmailer and photobox from now on....

E.M.

Contains_Mild_Peril

tomthebomb wrote:

She called her customer services department for some technical advice on the matter and was told that 'digital pictures are square but have to be turned into a rectangle for printing'.

:rotfl: I nearly !!!!!! myself laughing at that! :rotfl:
Jessops do offer 8x6" prints, which is the correct aspect ratio for standard digital pics, but a bit bigger (and more expensive!) than most customers want for their everyday prints. I still have no idea why the standard digital ratio is 3:4, which does not correspond to any other standard size (unless you count 12x16"!), and is sufficiently different from the 35mm 2:3 ratio to cause cropping problems. Jessops catalogue does mention that 7x5" rather than 6x4" prints are recommended for digital, since that's a bit closer to the correct ratio.
I would advise all photographers who have a lab print their work to avoid having important detail too close to the edge of the frame, whether using film or digital. For some reason, almost all processing labs crop the edges of the image, even if the ratio is correct. It's very frustrating. I spent a lot of money on an SLR camera to enable me to include exactly (and only) what I wanted in my pictures, but unfortunately some commercial prints lose so much of the edges that I would be as well using a compact camera.
I have to say that a recent batch of 8x6" digital prints I had printed at Jessops (Dumfries) were the best I've ever seen for including the whole image area, and also the best digital prints I've ever had in terms of overall quality. They're also very reasonably priced if you order 40+, at 25p each.

shilcor

I got wise to this a while back and whenever I take any digital images in to Jessops for printing, I pre-process them in Coral Photopaint first using the "paper size" option which, although it still crops the image just like Jessops would, it allows you to select which bit of the image gets cropped so you end up with an image in exactly the right aspect ratio for 6x4 or 7x5 (or whatever size prints you want). I'd guess that other photo processing software would have a similar feature - just takes a quick bit of working out with a calculator to get it right.

benc_3

I use PhotoBox to get my digital photos developed and have never had a problem with part of the picture being chopped out- I think this is because they print the photos at 6 x 4.5" - which is standard digital photo size.

Also at PhotoBox you can manually crop your photos when you have added them to your shopping basket so you can decide whether to chop anyones head off!

Hope this helps
BC

alison74

I get mine done at Asda 7 x 5 (now offer online aswell) It develops the pictures as they are on your screen, but if I get 6 x 4, then a little is cut off.


7 x 5 is a good size for digital prints

seb_2

Contains_Mild_Peril wrote:

:rotfl: I nearly !!!!!! myself laughing at that! :rotfl:
I still have no idea why the standard digital ratio is 3:4, which does not correspond to any other standard size (unless you count 12x16"!), and is sufficiently different from the 35mm 2:3 ratio to cause cropping problems.

Unless you include standard monitor resolutions
I always add black bands left/right of photo in PSP before getting them developed reduces the size but means you don't have to worry about stupid framing issues when taking the shot! - Think about it by doing this you are losing definition of the photo!