Photo Printing

[John]

Hi
I wonder if you please help me with this problem.
When printing a photograph from any software, Photoshop
7, Epson Photoquicker 3.2, Photo Express 3.0 SE or from
MS Photo Wizard. The preview looks fine, but the output
gives a boarder on the LHS, RHS and Bottom but not on the
top. These are not always equal. Now I have had an
Epson Engineer down to look at this. I have tried three
printers all give the same result. Epson have said it's
the computer set up and is down to me. If I use no
boarder I lose some of the Picture (edge to edge). Size
of paper being used is 4" x 6" or 5" x 7" result is the
same.

Printer is the Epson Photo Styles 950
Operating system is Windows XP (Home)
80 GB drive
Intel Pentium 4CPU 2.53 GHz
512 MB ram

If I print on larger paper saying that it is smaller I do
obtain the entire picture and have to trim the paper off.

John

 

[Yves Alarie]

Welcome to the world of digital cameras and the non-compatible world of
digital printers. Although they are supposed to work well together, they
don't and your results are typical and expected.
The reason is that digital cameras produce an image with an aspect ratio of
4 (length) x 3 (width). Divide 4 by 3 and you get 1.33. This is the aspect
ratio. Look at the dimensions of your image in pixels and divide the larger
number by the smaller number and you will get 1.33. Unless you have a Sony
and you shoot with the option 3:2 or you have a Canon Digital Rebel, it
shoots at 3:2. The 3:2 aspect ratio is 1.5


You want your image printed 6 (length) x 4 (width). Divide 6 by 4 and you
get 1.5.
You can't fit 1.33 into 1.5. Impossible.
So what are the options.
You stretch 1.33 to 1.5. The proportions of the items in the photo are now
out of lines
and you get an ugly picture.
The other option is you let the software print the entire image with no
stretching, but now it will print a smaller and correct image within the
paper size you selected, but to fit it in correctly you will have to accept
white edges around the image. Or, if you print borderless, it prints the
image from borders to borders, but it crops the edges in order to fit the
image on the paper size you selected.

The next option is to use a larger paper size and let the software print at
6 x 4, but then you need to trim the paper and this is a pain and a waste of
money.
There is a fourth option.
For this, you will need to purchase photo editing software or download a
free one. You can try the free www.ifranview,com


A very good one if you are into printing is Qimage, you can download the
demo here and try it:
http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/
and you can also download the manual and learn how to use it. It is probably
the best software for printing but a little "quirky" to use at first.


The other would be Microsoft Digital Image 9. Lots of fancy printing options
with it but a poor manual. However the Help file and onscreen help as you
work are great.


They both provide this fourth option to crop your image to a specific size,
your specific size being 6 x 4 or anything else. So you will have to remove
a little bit from the top and a little bit from the bottom of your image and
then it will fit
6 x 4 perfectly. Qimage does this automatically and gives you the option of
placing the crop where you want it, all at the top, all at the bottom or a
little bit of both. Image 9 does the same thing. Then, the image will fit
exactly on the paper size you selected.

Here is another site, explaining why you can't fit your 4:3 images on 6 x 4
paper. You can also download the free software from this site to
automatically crop your image to fit. You save the cropped images (they are
in effect automatically saved for you) and you then print them with the XP
Wizard. They will fit perfectly.

http://ekot.dk/programmer/JPEGCrops/



One more thing, since you need to crop a little from the top and bottom of
the photo in order to fit 6 x 4, don't frame your subject too close when you
take the picture with your digital camera. Otherwise you may be cropping
somebody's head when printing.

 

[John Inzer]

Hi
I wonder if you please help me with this problem.
When printing a photograph from any software, Photoshop
7, Epson Photoquicker 3.2, Photo Express 3.0 SE or from
MS Photo Wizard. The preview looks fine, but the output
gives a boarder on the LHS, RHS and Bottom but not on the
top. These are not always equal. Now I have had an
Epson Engineer down to look at this. I have tried three
printers all give the same result. Epson have said it's
the computer set up and is down to me. If I use no
boarder I lose some of the Picture (edge to edge). Size
of paper being used is 4" x 6" or 5" x 7" result is the
same.

Printer is the Epson Photo Styles 950
Operating system is Windows XP (Home)
80 GB drive
Intel Pentium 4CPU 2.53 GHz
512 MB ram

If I print on larger paper saying that it is smaller I do
obtain the entire picture and have to trim the paper off.

John

==========================================
Maybe the following article will offer some insight:

Aspect Ratio and unexpected cropping
http://tinyurl.com/ebwi

Bottom line...if the aspect ratio of your images is
different than the aspect ratio of the template you
are using for your prints....The full size image will
not fill the template or cropping will have to occur.

--

John Inzer
Picture It! MVP
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Picture It! Support Center
http://support.microsoft.com/?pr=pic