Printing Question

[CNCO]

I currently have a D80 in which I use to take all my images. When I shoot RAW, the images are 16x11. My wife likes to print images out at 4x6 / 5x7. Is there a way I can shoot to those sizes? Its really annoying to resize images in photoshop. If I print the images onto a 4x6 / 5x7 then the images are not proportional.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Reese's PB Luver]

4x6 and 5x7 are different. 4x6 is a cropped version of the 5x7. (IMO 5x7s are better....)

You don't have to resize the photos; the print driver will do that for you. Just select what size you want it printed at in the print menu. If you're printing 4x6 or another cropped size, make sure the retain proportions icon is showing so the picture isn't distorted. If you want a particular section of the photo to be the 4x6 crop, draw a marquee around it before printing and either print just the selection, crop it, or instead of the marquee you could manually move it around in the print preview box (if you and your printer are good at getting it exact or you don't need it absolutely exact).

BTW, yes, you can shoot smaller photo sizes, but I wouldn't recommend it because you can always downsize a photo, but not upsize it much beyond what you took it at. (In other words, if you someday wanted a larger sized print of an image but all your image files were taken smaller than that, tough luck!)

 

[Big Mike]

By the way, your images aren't "16x11"...not until you print them at that size anyway. They are 3872 pixels x 2592 pixels. You can use that to print any size you might want.

 

[CNCO]

thanks for the help, i think i missed the retain proportion at walgreens. i have to admit, they do a good job printing. my alternate printing place is cvs.

 

[KmH]

thanks for the help, i think i missed the retain proportion at walgreens. i have to admit, they do a good job printing. my alternate printing place is cvs.

Your D80, and all Nikon dSLR's, has an image sensor that is very close to having a 2:3 aspect ratio.

Prints that are 4x6, 6x9, 8x12, 10x15, 16x24, etc all have a 2:3 aspect ratio. Prints that are 4x5, 8x10, 16x20 all have a 4:5 aspect ratio.

So it boils down to the fact many popular print sizes don't match the native aspect ratio of your camera. So, you have to crop to print at those other sizes.

 

[CNCO]

thanks again everyone, i am going to take an image to test the print settings at my local printing places. ill post an update when i get a chance.