Creakj

I don't know what I was thinking but I did a phoot shoot using F22 on most of the shots...People in landscape. They turned out terrible.....people too small, pictures blurry. I sometime feel like giving this photo thing up. Anyway.....after that bit of whining, can I ask a questions about cropping that drives me up the wall?. I have the Canon 50D SLR camera. I never can figure out what to crop my pictures so someone is able to get any size print they want. Do I crop at 8x10??? I was doing that and then I read to do 4x6. Well, I did that and I am getting the error message that they are too small to print other than a 4x6. Thanks for the help.

charles brown Loc: Tennesse

Have had the same problem with cropping - I shot all pictures in RAW and then crop to size wanted, saving the original for a different size crop if needed I then do my pp on the cropped image. Another way is to pp the raw image, save the new image and then crop future prints as needed. Also had the same experience as you - was very unhappy with my photos. For me the answer was new lenses that had image stabilization and slowing down.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

Simplistic answer: Cropping and sizing are totally different. You appear to be discussing sizing the image. Usually there is no need to physically size it, but instead specify pixel dimensions. The physical sizing is usually automatic by the printer / software or print service you use. But if you need the image to fit on a specific size paper and completely use the paper (i.e.: 4x6) then cropping of the image may be required to get the needed aspect ratio (4x6),

(Not entirely technically correct, but I was trying to be very tyro basic... I may have fallen short...)

Creakj

Thanks for helping. This seems to be my problem....when I do photos for others, I edit them in either Aperture or Picasa and then send them to my storage site, Smugmug, where they can order prints. When editing and cropping, I never know what size to crop them to to cover whatever print size they may want. Do I need to make a copy at 4x6 and also 8x10 to cover most sizes they might choose? Thanks.

mrblackett Loc: Bloomfield, CT

I typically dont crop my photos to adjust for printing. My recommendation is to not zoom in too tight when shooting, leave space on the edges so that you don't loose any of the subject once the print software crops the shot for printing.

ishuttertothink Loc: Washington State

I use smugmug, and at checkout, it will tell you if it needs to be cropped, with the outline around the photo, and you can move it around to where you want it, so when people are ordering, they can pick the crop they want. Different sized reprints will be different crops.

mrblackett Loc: Bloomfield, CT

oh Gotcha - think I know what the problem is. I use snapfish for printing, and during the upload process there is an option to have your photos uploaded in full quality, high resolution or to have it shrunk for faster uploading. The fast option is only barley good for 4x6 printing, and comes out very grainy for anything larger.

If you don't have a storage limit then you should upload all your photos using the uncompressed option.

To know if the photos are compressed after uploading, you can try downloading one of those you uploaded, then compare it's sharpness to your original file.

cecilia delacroix Loc: near Seattle

About the first part of your post: You didn't say if the people were your main focal point, but if they were you might next time want to shoot at a wider aperture like f/8 or f/11....I'm guessing the effects of diffraction at a high f/stop like 22 was the reason your focal point was blurry. (Most lens' "optimum" stop to avoid diffraction is somewhere around f/8).

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

Don't shoot tight.....your camera is going to print a 2x3, 4x6, 8x12, 16x24 and so on. If you leave room in your images, then sizes other than your cameras 2x3 format have a chance without losing critical info....just do not shoot so tight.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

f22 probably gave you such a slow shutter speed that any camera shake, subject movement etc. will make the picture soft. A tripod might have helped but you didn’t mention using one. If people were the subject of your image, then you need to get closer to your subject and compose it so that the background is appealing. Welcome to learning about photography instead of just settling for a snap shot.


If you are going to print them, crop to the size you plan to print. If you're going to display your images on a web site that does the printing for the customer, you need not crop them because as stated above, the customer will see what the crop looks like when they purchase the image. Too many if(s) so I probably shouldn't speculate. If someone you know wants one of your images and they tell you they are going to make a certain size print, you can help them by post processing the RAW image and cropping for that print size. If you take an image to a printing service without cropping, you might not like what you get because they almost always cut some of the sides of the image off. The aspect ration of the print size verses the aspect ration of the original images will usually be different so something will be cut off. One other thing is that if you crop the image for say 10x8 landscape, then in the print dialog you will select the size of the paper and paper quality etc., and then tell it a print size and print orientation i.e. landscape, portrait etc.