Keeping photos from being cropped when printed

dakota5176 · Nov 2, 2012

I have some pictures that are being cropped too much when I print them. It was suggested to me that if I download Fast Stone I could add a border to the pictures so that when they are printed only the border would be cropped out. Does anyone know how to add a border in Fast Stone?

MLeeK · Nov 2, 2012

You can't avoid the crop factor. Your sensor is one size. One ratio. Probably 2:3. It will print to 2x3, 4x6, 8x12, etc.
If you print to any other ratio such as an 8x10 it's not divisible by 2:3 so there is a crop.
When shooting you must leave room for the inevitable crop factor. If you make it a habit to leave the equivalent of 2 inches on the long side of every image you will be fine in cropping. 8x10 is the worst.

480sparky · Nov 2, 2012

bratkinson · Nov 3, 2012

I was having printer-cropping nightmares as well until I figured out that my final edited picture using a very old version of Photoshop was not the same dimensions as the printer was using for my usual-size 4x6 prints. That's when I started to re-crop pictures after a test-print on plain paper of the photos.

Then I upgraded to Photoshop Elements back in January. It's cropping feature permits predefined crop sizes such as 3x5, 4x6, etc. And for portraits, there's a 'reverse' crop-size button as well, which changes it to 5x3, or 6x4, etc. I then save the cropped pictures into a different folder, keeping the original un-cropped versions for later re-cropping to different sizes if I so desire.

KmH · Nov 3, 2012

dakota5176 said:
I have some pictures that are being cropped too much when I print them. It was suggested to me that if I download Fast Stone I could add a border to the pictures so that when they are printed only the border would be cropped out. Does anyone know how to add a border in Fast Stone?

Yes, adding a border is one way to solve the problem.

I never used FastStone to add a border, don't have it installed on my computer anymore, and don't think it can add a border.

The free image editing application GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program can. What you do is put the image on a (usually white) canvas larger than the photo.

If you have an 2:3 (8x12) image you want to print on 8x10 paper you can either resize the photo or you can change the PPI of the photo.

To determine what PPI use the formula pixels divided by inches = PPI - So if you want the long side of the photo to be 10 inches instead of 12 inches - the long side pixels divided by 10 inches = PPI. Here is an example - assuming your 8x12 photo has pixel dimensions of 2000x3000 pixels, 3000 pixels divided by 12 inches = 250 PPI. 3000 pixels divided by 10 inches = 300 PPI. the short side will no longer be 8 inches at 300 PPI - 2000 pixels divided by 300 = 6.67 inches.
The 8x10 print (5:4 aspect ratio) will have no border on the sides, and if centered will have 0.67 inch borders at the top and bottom of the photo.

FWIW, when describing print size,s it's convention to always state the width first. That way everyone knows the orientation of the photo as portrait (4x6, 8x10, 20x30) or landscape (6x4, 10x8, 30x20).
So the convention for print aspect ratios would be such that 2:3 indicates the portrait orientation and 3:2 indicates the landscape orientation.

unpopular · Nov 3, 2012

Dear lord.

All you need to do is make a 300ppi template at the size of the paper used at the lab and plop your image into the template adjust the size, then trim away the excess paper after printing.

Just make a new document at, say 8x10x300ppi flatten, copy and paste the image into it on it's own layer, and scale to fit.