Aspect Ratio, cropping and printing.....help!

[Youngstu]

Ok, to start off I'd just like to say thanks to this forum in general. I knew nothing recently regarding Aspect Ratios but have been reading up on here and have an idea now although I still have some queries.
I've been taking digital photographs now, mostly while travelling for almost 10 years. Not until now have I decided to get to know what I am actually doing.
Sadly my style of photography was point, shoot, dump it onto the PC and forget about it. I am now starting the long task of trying to arrange, back up and print off the photographs to create albums.
I'm no professional and this would show if anyone on here was to have a look at the photographs although as I look back through them I do have a lot of shots which I think are good and they do mean a lot to me.
The cameras across this time have been Canon Powershot A75 (compact), Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9 (compact) and Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3 (Micro4/3). After looking at the properties of my photographs and now understanding a little, I know that they have all been taken in 4:3 Aspect Ratio. Here are my queries:-

1. I understand that with all my photos taken in 4:3 the most obvious thing to do would be to print to 6 x 4.5 as a general photo album size as printing to 6 x 4 I would lose some of the image. Would I be better to do this or should I crop some how to convert to 3:2 for 6 x 4 prints. The only thing putting me off printing to 6 x 4.5 is that it seems quite impossible to find any good albums ( Black, dark brown, tan or navy - leather or leather effect). I can't understand this as I thought that 6 x 4.5 printig would be popular these days, maybe I'm wrong.

2. Cropping - OK so I have a 4:3 image - 2816 x 2112. It's not always ideal just to print this whole image as 6 x 4.5. Example, maybe I need to straighten the image a little or crop even a small amount from one edge. This then alters the pixel size of the image and it is now smaller than 2816 x 2112. What will happen now when I try to print this image as 6 x 4.5? Will I end up with white bars on the print?
I don't have any real software like Adobe yet, with something like this, is there away to carry out straightening or slight cropping and still retain my 4:3 ratio?

I remember years back I did have a small Epson Picturemate printer and I played around with that printing off some of my own 6 x 4 photos. I found some of these recently and understand now why some of them have the bars at the ends of the photos. The quality of those prints has held up really well.

Any help would be great thanks again.

P.S If anyone on here does print to 6 x 4 or 6 x 4.5 for album purposes, do you prefer to have the full image or do you leave a small white border around the photo? Some of the images I found from the old Epson had a small, even, white border around the photo and look really good (the small amount that I printed out correctly....haha)

 

[petrochemist]

I've never see 6*4.5 paper or albums.
When priniting my shots I usually print to A4. It doesn't quite match the aspect ratio of most of my shots, the option used for printing will depend on the photo.
Some will be cropped to fit, others stretched 'fit to page' (the small change in height/width is not normally noticable) If the image has previously cropped the aspect ratio is sometimes too far out to fit with either of these options & I'll settle for the white bars, then trim them off & produce a custom frame or laminate.

As far as albums go I find digital storage preferable, my print outs are usually for exhibitions & club sessions. I often use Laminated prints as place mats.

 

[Ido]

3:2 was a common standard in the film days, when most consumers shot on 35mm film. Medium Format had different aspect ratios.
Most printers and media were optimized for that 3:2 ratio, and that has carried on to the digital era.
Most "serious" cameras retained that 3:2 aspect ratio, though Olympus and Panasonic chose 4:3. And practically all point and shoot cameras that came out had sensors with an aspect ratio of 4:3, as that was the standard for computer monitors, which are the most common output form for users of point and shoot cameras.
Fast forward to this day, widescreen has become the norm - 16:9. But point and shoot cameras are still 4:3, and the most commonly used print media is 3:2 (although 4:5 is a very common ratio, as well).

1. Have you given any thought to printing photo books, with services like Blurb? My family used to print out photos and then put them in an album, like you plan on doing, but we've since gone to printing photo books using a similar service. It's really amazing, you should try it.

2. There are many applications that let you crop or straighten an image, while keeping the original aspect ratio. I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for my entire workflow, pretty much, and it obviously does that - but I'm sure that there are free pieces of software that do it, maybe even built into the operating system.

Don't be afraid of cropping and changing the aspect ratio, though. Crop any way you like, and then print to the size you want in the closest aspect ratio you can find. You'll have white bars on each side or top and bottom if the paper's aspect ratio isn't identical to the photo's, but you can easily cut it off.

 

[CameraClicker]

I use dSLR's that shoot 3:2. My wife uses Canon's G11 and G16, which shoot 4:3. If you know you are going to be cropping, you shoot a little wide to give room for straightening and cropping. It is much better to crop for yourself than to let the local drug store and photo printer do it. They take a crop out of the middle to fill the paper. Frequently this chops off parts of people's head and feet. If you decide you need the whole frame, sometimes you can build a bit more on the short side by cloning.
We send 4 X 6 (or 4R) photos to Blacks (a local camera store) for printing when there is a lot of volume that size. Photoshop is told to crop 6 X 4 at a resolution of 300, then you just drag the mouse until the box covers what you want to retain. However, I have my own printer and print many sizes. Usually I use 8.5 X 11 stock, I think that's A4 size, almost. On that, I print 1, 2, 4, or 6 photos. The paper is left uncut and goes into plastic sleeves in a standard 3 ring binder. This method leaves some room for text, people, places, event names and dates. A 4:3 photo fills the space better but a 3:2 photo leaves more space for text. If printing one photo on the whole sheet, it can be cropped to fit or left whole with a wider border.
You could download GIMP for free. It is powerful but challenging to learn. Photoshop has moved to a monthly rental model, so there is a regular drain instead of a lump sum payment. And there are other packages available for free or some reasonable fee.
DxO Optics Pro 9 handles noise really well, it is a raw converter, but it can do general brightening, straightening and cropping.

 

[Youngstu]

Petrochemist - Thanks, I have some images which I think I'll get printed to A4 and either keep in a folder or get framed.

Ido - I'll have a look into the photobooks, thanks. I'm going to have a look at Lightroom also, see how I get on.

CameraClicker - I'll keep it in mind now to leave some space where possible in the image for cropping. So does your wife just crop her images down from 4:3 to 3:2 and then print?

Thanks again guys.