Oldie question: What's so great about borderless prints

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael A. Covington
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Michael A. Covington

This is a dumb question from someone who has been involved in photography
since the 1960s...

Why do prints have to be borderless? Or rather, why is "borderless" a
selling point?

The reason prints used to have borders is that the edges are vulnerable to
damage. It is also easier to handle the paper in various ways (whether in
an enlarging easel or in a computer printer).

I have never attempted to make a borderless print (either photographically
or in my inkjet printer) and frankly am not sure why I should want to do so.
What's the appeal of borderlessness?



--
Clear skies,

Michael Covington -- www.covingtoninnovations.com
Author, Astrophotography for the Amateur
and (new) How to Use a Computerized Telescope
 
I think it has to do with alignment. Feeding paper through a printer is not
an exact science and often you end up with the image shifted in one
direction or another. A border around a picture which is irregularly shaped
would look pretty bad.
 
=>This is a dumb question from someone who has been involved in photography
=>since the 1960s...
=>
=>Why do prints have to be borderless? Or rather, why is "borderless" a
=>selling point?

'Cuz that's what the photo labs offer.
 
Wolf Kirchmeir said:
=>This is a dumb question from someone who has been involved in photography
=>since the 1960s...
=>
=>Why do prints have to be borderless? Or rather, why is "borderless" a
=>selling point?

'Cuz that's what the photo labs offer.
Click to expand...

So why did photo labs switch to borderless in, I think, the 1980s? Prints
used to have borders.

Someone else opined that it might be to conceal alignment errors. That's
plausible.
 
<< From: "Wolf Kirchmeir" (e-mail address removed)
Date: Sun, Nov 23, 2003 10:04 PM
Message-id: <[email protected]>

=>This is a dumb question from someone who has been involved in photography
=>since the 1960s...
=>
=>Why do prints have to be borderless? Or rather, why is "borderless" a
=>selling point?

'Cuz that's what the photo labs offer.


-- >><BR><BR>
AND, you get BIGGER prints for the same paper costs.
 
=>
=>=>> On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 21:17:54 -0500, Michael A. Covington
=>> wrote:
=>>
=>> =>This is a dumb question from someone who has been involved in
=>photography
=>> =>since the 1960s...
=>> =>
=>> =>Why do prints have to be borderless? Or rather, why is "borderless" a
=>> =>selling point?
=>>
=>> 'Cuz that's what the photo labs offer.
=>
=>So why did photo labs switch to borderless in, I think, the 1980s? Prints
=>used to have borders.
=>
=>Someone else opined that it might be to conceal alignment errors. That's
=>plausible.

IMO, it was cheap way to offer "bigger" prints without
actually increasing costs - the white border had to be
developed and fixed, too, you see. The processors quietly
passed over telling their customers that a standard print,
with or without borders, hacks off a rather startling
amount of the image in the original negative (the printing
machine cuts off about a millimeter all around, to allow
for alignment slop in the machine.) Borderless printing on
a printer does the same.

HTH
 
This is a dumb question from someone who has been involved in photography
since the 1960s...

Why do prints have to be borderless? Or rather, why is "borderless" a
selling point?
Click to expand...
ive been scanning a lot of old family photos and in general find the
prints with borders tend to look much better than the plethora of
borderless awful snapshots that came along with the cheap auto focus
cameras
especially older black and whites the composition is pretty much
always superior
the point and snap led to millions of pics with terrible composition
and often blurry resolution

the border gives a frame to a picture as well making it look more like
its in a frame and as with most paintings they tend to look much
better when framed
 
Borderless prints came about because most consumer picture takers did
a lousy job of composing their pictures with point and shoot cameras.
By going borderless, it was possible to get an image with some of the
useless background sacrificed to get a slightly larger image of the
centered subject without having to pay for an enlargement. This suited
most consumer picture takers very well because they always center
pictures of their kids or pets and use the zoom to make it almost fill
up the frame. The cropping of borderless prints leaves almost all of
the width and removes lots of the length, particularly in the 35mm
format. The cropped borderless format also suits consumer computer
types (the same consumer picture takers) who buy cheap printers and
lots of ink carts without refilling. In this case, the previous
discussion applies with the additional factor that borderless prints
use more ink, and hence are promoted by the printer manufacturers --
you can consider it either as a matter of consumer demand by poor
picture takers, or as promotion by greedy ink sellers. Both factors
are true.

Now, if you know something about composing a picture, and more
particularly about editing and cropping digital images, you just have
one more option to play with getting something Aunt Sophie likes. Aunt
Sophie knows nothing about photography or computers or printing, and
just wants big faces of her grandkids because her eyes are failing and
she can't see them otherwise.

JMW
 
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