Converting digital pictures for printing
Reg Siemens
world of digital photography and just found out the hard way that digital
photos are created in 4:3 format when your standard photo processing
facility print is 3:2 (e.g. 6x4, 7x5, 10x8, etc.). Taking digital images in
to have them professionally printed has resulted in the top and bottom being
cropped. I like to take my photos with very little head room and therefore
have found many of my shots are less than ideal when cropped equally from
top and bottom. What I'd like to do is manipulate the images prior to
burning my CD to take to the printer so that I choose how they're cropped.
So the point of this whole message...what is the best software to facilitate
cropping a whack of images to 3:2 ratio prior to printing? More often than
not, I'd like to crop exclusively from the bottom.
Thanks in advance for your help
Reg Siemens
Winnipeg, Canada
pmg
Almost any graphics editing program will do this, from lowly freewares (eg
http://www.rocketdownload.com/details/grap/4676.htm) all the way to the big
daddies like Photoshop. Usually the dig camera comes with a software that
will do the cropping along with other things like rotation, etc. I use
Paintshop Pro (www.jasc.com) because it's loaded with other options for
tidying up your image before printing.
Pete
"Reg Siemens" <regsi...@coldmail.com> wrote in message
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Reg Siemens
> http://www.rocketdownload.com/details/grap/4676.htm) all the way to the
big
> daddies like Photoshop. Usually the dig camera comes with a software that
> will do the cropping along with other things like rotation, etc. I use
> Paintshop Pro (www.jasc.com) because it's loaded with other options for
> tidying up your image before printing.
Thanks Pete,
I have various photo-editing packages on my system and I've been fixing
red-eye etc. and I have also used their cropping tools but it seems to be
trial and error i.e. crop and undo until you have the 3:2 ratio required for
standard prints. I'm probably not alone in wanting to print my digital
photos professionally and I would hope/imagine there is software out there
that would, as an example, format all of the selected photos from 4:3 to 3:2
cropping the bottom only.
Reg
pmg
Most of the graphics editing software I've used allows you to either
manually resize the image using the mouse or there is a resize tool option
that allows you to set the ratio or actual dimensions. What I have often
done is set the width or height to what I want, looking at the value that
this creates in the resize tool's options or settings and then simply
calculate the other dimention by either multiplying or dividing by 1.5 and
setting the other dimension to that figure.
Any "totally automatic" cropping tool (if it exists) will obviously leave
you no control of where the crop needs to be.
Paintshop Pro, the editor I use has configurable presets in it's resize
toolbar (4X6, 6X4, etc etc) that you can add to or modify. When using the
resize tool this option appears on the toolbar and you can simply click the
ratio you want. This produces the cropping frame correctly proportioned over
your image and you only need to drag the corner and move the position to get
the correct crop position, the preset ratio is fixed. Of course Paintshop
comes with all the other enhancement tools like redeye removal, automatic
photoenhancement, special effects, etc so it is a complete package. It's
available for a free download and trial period.
Good luck.............Pete
"Reg Siemens" <regsi...@coldmail.com> wrote in message
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Reg Siemens
Thanks for the further info on Paintshop Pro. I guess cropping them one
picture at a time with the predefined format will have to do if there are
none that incorporate some type of wizard to do a batch. I still think it
would be a feature that would be beneficial...do a batch conversion to 3:2
and then just preview thumbnails to ensure that they're OK before printing.
Based on your message I looked for pre-defined 4x6 cropping feature and none
of the photo editors that I had previously installed on my machine had it,
however I found a copy of PhotoSuite Platinum sitting on the shelf that was
bundled with some video editing software that I bought and I'd never
bothered to install it...till now. I went ahead and installed it and sure
enough it has the predefined formats and this certainly works better than
the hit and miss manual cropping.
Thanks for steering me in the right direction!
Reg
"pmg" <p...@replytogroup.com.au> wrote in message
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Reinder Mulder
free picture viewer and simple editor. It supports a.o. batch *resizing*
to 3:2 or *cropping* to a fixed position and size in pixels.
The first option will lead to some distortion whilst the second requires
all pictures in one batch to have the same resolution e.g. 1600 x 1200
so these can be cropped to let's say 1500 x 1000 from absolute position
50, 100
Hope this helps,
Reinder
Tesselator
Don't do it. Buy yourself a nice die-sub printer. What are
they these days anyway? About $250 ~ $350 ? And they're faster
than shhhhhaving cream these days.
BTW, you said in your first post that digital images are cropped
as if 35mm film images aren't. They are. The standard print
cuts a massive 7.5mm off either the right or the left of a landscape
oriented neg. and you're at the mercy of the photo guy to raise
that blade and make the change. The paper cut may crop more yet
depending on the machine used but usually not with Maritsu or
a Boss.
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Reg Siemens
prints them in 1 hour for CDN $.29 per print. Any reviews that I have read
on die-sub printers would put the cost per print at about US$.50 (about CDN
$.75). That's more than double Costco's price. So I'm supposed to lay out
hundreds of dollars to be able to pay more than double per print??? Sure
convenience is worth something but I usually print 100 plus at a shot so
it's not a big deal.
Reg
"Tesselator" <jimm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Tesselator
knowing the volume you printed in etc. I personally have
never printed more than five or ten shots in any given month.
I keep all that stuff on photo-CDs or ISO 9660 and call it
up on the home entertainment system or on one of the PCs
where it's printed instantly to a 21" monitor.
$0.50 Ya, that's kind of alot if you're doing many. I'd
suggest ink printers but they fade and discolor in a relativly
short peroid of time. How about grey market supply houses
(mostly in New York) that I see in the backs of photo mags?
Have you considered thier prices or are you just going by
what reviewers write up in thier product review articles?
I /think/ most reviews calculate such figures based on MSRP.
I bet yu could cut that in half. If you could that would
even it out a bit.
That and/or do both. When you don't care have costco do
the dirty and when you want it to look right print it on
the die-sub.
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