Printing/putting photos on a disc at 8x10 format please help!

Aakajx · May 28, 2014

Ok so when I take photos I tend to crop them and I haven't thought about printing them until now. Now I don't know what to do with sizing them at 8x10 after I've cropped them to the way I like it. I feel like I've messes up a lot with the way I've been cropping my pictures like mad.

KmH · May 28, 2014

You can put your cropped photos centered on a standard size blank white canvas made in an editing program, and the print will have some blank border that you could leave or trim.
If you order a big enough print, most labs will trim the excess for you if you ask them to.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/.../360887-non-standard-sizes-order-options.html
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...-print-format-size-responses-appreciated.html

Aspect ratio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

bratkinson · May 29, 2014

I generally tend to shoot 'wider' than needed to give me flexibility when cropping for printing later on. I've also gone through a steady progression of cameras from a 3mp Canon G3 to 22mp 5D3 so I have the ability to change a landscape format photograph to portrait, if I want, and still have enough pixels left to get a decent printed image. I did some major cropping a couple of weeks ago for a baptism service realizing too late that I had inadvertently mounted my 16-35 rather than 24-105 and everything was 'too wide'.

I don't generally print everything, but for what I will be printing, I create a separate folder for each cropped size (4x6, 5x7, etc) and then using the pre-defined crop sizes in Photoshop Elements, I crop the previously fully-post-processed images to the sizes I want, preserving the original, uncropped versions. The advantages of doing the cropping myself to the desired image size lets =ME= make the choices of what to include and exclude rather than someone else or, worse yet, my photo-printing program, which cuts off arms on one side of the photo and retains distracting elements on the other side, etc.

Civchic · May 29, 2014

One thing I really like about Costco printing, besides their quality compared to places like Walmart, is their uploader, which allows you to very very easily crop to the desired size for printing. It gives me full control over the image the printer will crop to.

Aakajx · May 30, 2014

Yeah just when I put them on a disc shouldn't they be 8x10 if I'm giving them to people?

Big Mike · May 30, 2014

Aakajx said:
Yeah just when I put them on a disc shouldn't they be 8x10 if I'm giving them to people?

That's up to you, but I typically leave images in the native 2:3 ratio (4x6 print) when I give them to people.

KmH · May 30, 2014

Images on a disc have no physical size - like 8x10.
They only have an aspect ratio and image resolution (pixel dimensions).

8x10 is a 5:4 aspect ratio. Or put another way - the long side of the photo is 1.25x longer than the short side.
5000 px by 4000 px is a 5:4 aspect ratio digital photo.
So is:
500 x 400 pixels
1000 x 800 pixels
3078 x 2462 pixels
1965 x 1572 pixels

As an example - you have a cropped photo that has pixel dimensions of 2215 pixels on the short side, 2215 x 1.25 = 2769 pixels are needed on the long side to be a 5:4 aspect ratio.
If the long side has fewer than 2769 pixels it can't be printed as an 8x10. It will print as an '8 by something less than 10'.
If the long side has more than 2769 pixels the long side needs to have more cropped off to make it 2769 pixels.

Now. To make 5:4 aspect ratio prints we have to add a print resolution - pixels-per-inch (ppi) - to set the size of a print.
From the example above you have a 5:4 aspect ratio photo that now has pixel dimensions of 2769 x 2215 pixels.

More math (pixels / inches = ppi) - 2769 pixels / 10 " = 276.9 pixels-per-inch (round off to 277 ppi)
2215 pixels / 8" = 276.9 ppi (round off to 277 ppi)

To make different size 5:4 prints from that 2769 x 2215 photo all we need to change is the ppi.

Want a 16 x 20 print? - 2769 px / 16" = 173 ppi.
Want a 12 x 15 print? - 2769 px / 15" = 185 ppi.
Want a 32 x 40 print? 2769 px / 40 = 69 ppi. 69 ppi is likely to low a print resolution to maker a quality print. Most online print labs have a minimum print resolution limit of about 100 ppi.

From this - pixels / inches = ppi - we can do some basic algebra and get 2 other very useful equations:
pixels / ppi = inches
inches x ppi = pixels

With those 3 basic math equations you can calculate each of the 3 values.
Note: Image resolution only applies to electronic display and ppi (print resolution) is meaningless. Print size is determined by image resolution and print resolution.