Question About Sizing....

chrisburke

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I'm sort of confused... I would assume that taking pictures with a camera, the pics would be the right proportions that they are suppose to be when i want to print them out.... allow me to try to explain...

I've taken some pictures... with my d40... I shoot in raw... I import the pictures into lightroom... then i do a little bit of cropping (it all stays proportionate...) then I take the picture to a printing kiosk... and I want an 8x10... however.. the picture is to big.. so instead of the kiosk just sizing the image properly.. it cuts a bunch off.... now the picture looks like crap... so I try something else... I go home... I resize the image to an 8x10... the orignal is HUGE, 33x22 or something crazy like that.. i'm not sure... i do the resize.. which i assume should look good.. but now people are stretched... or flatteneed... how can i just take a picture and print it out so its a proper image size (8x10... 5x8 whatever) and the people look the same..

I'm obvously doing somehting wrong???
 
The images that your camera records are not exactly proportioned for printing. You will always need to crop. The pictures are recorded as a file 'X' pixels high, by 'Y' pixels wide. What you have to do is conver that into a cropped image of X by Y inches at 'Z' dots per inch.

It sounds like perhaps your DPI setting (Dots per Inch, the # of drops of ink the printer lays down in an inch) may not be set correctly, so when the print kiosk reads the file, it can't translate the dimensions correctly.

Ideally you want 250 - 300 DPI for photo-quality printing.

What software are you using to crop your images?
 
If you are printing an 8x10 you need the number of pixels for the length and width to be a ratio of 8:10 after cropping. For a 4x6 you need 4:6, etc,etc. Any photo software should be able to manage this easily.

I see your working with CS3 so... When you go to the crop tool set the dimensions to the size of print you want when you crop, Photoshop will keep the ratio's inline. In lightroom when you have the crop overlay on set your 'aspect' to the size of print you want. Then you should have no problems with distortion. If your still having problems with the kiosk, perhaps try a different company, or submit your images online, etc.
 
I, personally, like the Kodak Easyshare system. I've ordered prints from them before and never had a problem. I have yet to do an 8x10, but will eventually. The nice thing about Kodak is when you upload an image, it tells you the maximum print size your photo will look good at.
 
hey guys,

i use light room to do the crop... then i go into PS3 open the image, and change the size to 8x10.... the picture getting squished has nothing to do with the kiosk... its squished before i go there.. because of the resizing.. i guess what i'm wondering is, why are they squishing... i'll try the DPI thing to see if that makes a difference
 
There's no reason to resize. When you crop, you just want to keep the aspect ratio of the print size as others have said.

When you are cropping in Lightroom, just change the aspect ratio to 4x6 and crop to what you want the image to look like. It keeps it in the 4x6 ratio and you send that to print. You don't have to actually resize it to 4x6 at all. The cropping takes care of that.

If you crop to a 4x6 ratio, you can print any sizes that has that ratio. 2x3, 4x6, 8x12, 12x18, 16x24, they are all the same ratio and will all print by the same image without resizing for each one individually if you crop as has been explained.

If you want to print a different ratio, such as 8x10, then you crop it with that aspect ratio. You can print anything at that ratio you want without actually resizing it. 8x10 cropping prints out at 4x5, 8x10, 12x15, 16x20.....
 

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