lyndacast

I have a friend who has asked me to frame several images of doorways, windows, and streets that I have taken to hang in a long office hallway. I want to enlarge them to 11x14 or 16x20 and then matt and frame them.

I plan to upload them to Costco or Amazon Prime for printing. When I experiment and upload a few of my images on these sites, I do not like they way they crop the images at the 16x20 size and I cannot seem to move the crop tool slightly right or left to get it right. Is this common for these kinds of printing services?

Also, if I am using a crop sensor camera (Nikon d7500) and my intent is to shoot images that will be enlarged to 11x14 or larger, should I change the aspect ratio?
My camera is set to 3:2 currently.

I am not a professional....just a hobbyist who doesn’t often print my photos for hanging. Any constructive suggestions will be greatly appreciated. TIA

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Shoot at the full 21MP resolution of your D7500 in the native 3:2 aspect ratio. Crop to the desired print aspect ratio in your post processing. Look at the pixel resolution of your images after cropping and divide the pixels by 300 to confirm the highest quality printing (as in: x pixels / y pixels per inch (ppi) = z inches such as 6000 pixels / 300 ppi = 20 inches on one side of your image). The larger the print, the less 'critical' this 300 ppi printing 'gold standard' becomes where 250 to 200 ppi is acceptable too as you need to stand further back from the image to view the larger print size.

bbradford Loc: Wake Forest NC

Hey CGH Canon,
Don't you ever get tired of knowing everything? Lol. Glad we have you around . Bryan

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

If you're getting a printing service to do your prints you are limited to standard frame sizes/aspect ratios. If your photos do not fit those sizes you need to go into an editing program and add white space to the edges to make the aspect ratio appropriate to the size you want to print. If you are planning to mat the photos, make the added space the same color as the mat.

I always crop my images to fit the composition, not the frame. I usually have to add white space to the appropriate side to get it to fit the print. I have a couple that were in a black frame so I added black margins to look like a mat.

bleirer

If you want to be able to move them around on the Costco site as you said, you might be able to use the tools there to enlarge them a little first then you can reposition a little for cropping.

BebuLamar

Before I send an image for enlargement I would crop my image in the correct aspect ratio and then see if they would print the entire image or they still crop a little and how little.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

If you crop it to an 8x10 aspect ratio, Costco prints an 8x10 with no (known) additional cropping.
I've done so. I've also used their on-line crop mask.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Hi. The old standard of 8 x 10, 11 x14, 16 x20 does not always work well with the digital 3:2 format. You have choices, one is to shoot the scene knowing that you will crop for the old standard size images (so leave enough space to do this), the second one is to get a 3:4 ratio setting (different camera or change it to that if your camera can do that), or three, simply use the 3:2 image ratio for printing. I most often use the 3:2 ratio. Sometimes, of course, I'll also use the 11 x14 image crop, mostly with animals or flowers as there is generally enough room to do that. You can find mats made for the 3:2 ratio. A 10 x 15 print can be matted for a 16 x 20 frame. A 12 x 18 print can be matted for a 20 x 24 frame. Generally speaking, using a standard of 300 ppi, an image that is 4500 pixels across will size nicely to the 10 x 15 print. 2500 pixels across will size up for an 8 x 10 print. About 5000 pixels across is needed for a 16 x 20 print. These are general guidelines; most printers use the 300 ppi standard. Bay Photo does a good job, as do many other professional online printers.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

If your set to an aspect ratio of 3:2 you will get 4X6 prints from this without cropping, I call it FULL OUT, you print exactly what you see in the viewfinder. Other sizes include 8X12, 16X24, and 20X30. If you use an aspect ratio of 5:4 you get 4X5, 8X10, and 16X20.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

So you print full throttle, correct?

bleirer

Printing services have rudimentary editing capability, so you don't have the crop or resize everything before uploading to the portal. If you get a custom mat cut and want to keep your original size you can print to the closest size and click the fit all button or similar name. You will get white space on the odd dimension that can be trimmed by the framer, If you want to conform to a standard off the shelf mat some cropping is often needed. Click the editing/cropping tool to adjust, just don't stretch the side or top. Handle the corner anchors rather than the sides to avoid this on some portals. Enlarging the image within the window first and then moving the image within the window also works. You can also add borders of different sizes and colors.

If you don't have any space to crop you have to get into Photoshop and add some fill. Content aware fill in the edit menu is a great tool for that, or just click content aware when cropping/resizing.

A good habit when cropping in PS is to unclick 'delete cropped pixels.' That way you can easily recover the area outside of your crop just by clicking outside the cropping frame.

xposure

I tend to leave very little room for cropping so I print them 12x18 full frame and use a 12x18 to 16x20 matt and frame it 16x20.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Sure.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I find it unlikely that doorways, windows, or streets are likely to have a standard print aspect ratio.

Kalskag2

Thanks for that explanation!