HELP! lol I am ready to burn the disc of images for the friendship shoot I did last week, I know how to resize in photoshop but what I want to know is am I better off saving them on the disc as a jpeg or tiff? They are not buying prints off me so they will be taking the disc to get their own prints.... Any help would be appreciated.
If they are getting them printed you shouldn't resize them at all. Save them as JPEGs with the quality slider up to maximum, and without any resizing, and that will give them the highest quality prints when they take the disc in.
Resizing the dimensions of an image to be smaller is a huge no-no if the image is being printed.
@abirkill I have cropped some of them and a while ago when I took a couple of shots for a friend she said when she went to get them printed a couple were cut off in places. I just don't want the same thing happening.
@tracywilliams I know what you're talking about... I'm curious to see what the answer is to make sure that when someone takes a disc in somewhere to have prints made, they don't get cropped in odd places.
@tracywilliams Tracy, the comments from Alexis @abirkill make sense - plus JPEG will be accepted by more print outlets than TIFF. Cropping will occur if the size (ratio) chosen at the print outlet is inconsistent with your image - ie 6x4 or 5x7 or 8x10 are different dimensions. You may like to provide the ratio of the images with the disc to the recipients, so they can select the correct ratio at the print outlet, or call the print outlet & ascertain what sizes of paper they provide. A machine will 'automatically' crop your image to the correct ratio for the paper selected.
I think the cropping might be because 35mm film was a 3:2 format and photographic prints are optimised for this format (regardless of size). DSLR still produce images that are in 3:2 format but compact cameras produce images that are in 4:3 format and these will be cropped when printed in a 3:2 format (regardless of size) by a photo/print shop.
What Lyn said - find out what size they will want to print and set up aspect ratio accordingly... I've started saving the info as part of the file name to avoid print issues down the road
One more question, I am wondering what is the best ratio to save the photos at if you don't know what size they are going to want to print them? If you are going to crop, should you do a 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 and save each one? They may want to print a 4x6 now and a year down the road do a 8x10. Anyone know?
@superbeyotch My gut reaction wld be to save it in original aspect ratio to give greatest options for cropping later! But if there is a btr approach I'd certainly like to hear about it!
I would agree with one addition caveat depending on how good a friend they are. I would export them as full size with full quality. It may not make a difference in quality when they print out smaller sizes but if they want to blow up one or two in bigger size then this will be fine.
The caveat : if they're good friends... resize to about 768 x 512 or something suitable small enough for them to upload a few images to facebook or whatever.
Regarding the various sizes of print... dont both cropping to account for this, leave it as is. Dont try to pre empt what may or may not happen, leave it as a decision to be made at time of print. Most software at the printers will be able to crop find and they wont notice the difference
Just to add to my comment. I also if I am giving out digital files, I give them the images in a 2:3 ratio as this is the standard ratio for printing.
I also let them know that I take no responsibility for the quality of print - this is because they may print the images on printers that may not be colour corrected for the images and they may print them in a different ratio than what they were designed for. The print quality is also determined by the quality of the paper and if they print on cheap paper through a cheap printer then they may get prints which may not look like they digital images.
I always push my clients for me to print their images for these reason. The last thing I want to happen is that they take my images, print them out and they look like rubbish and I get the blame.
I also give them strict licence agreement where they can not sell or distribute the image for anything other than non-commercial purposes.
Of course for me I am in the business of making money from my images so I handle it a bit differently.
@agima What if you crop stuff out of a shot.... and it's not 2:3 in size... do you change that somehow? I'm only asking this as when I process my RAW files... sometimes I crop or want something out of the shot... but I usually just do it manually, however I have the option to do a fixed ratio crop too. I don't crop often as I usually shoot it how I want it, but there are times!
@debsulzberger in lightroom its just one bulk operation... so you just set it and walk away... but really there's no point as the software in alot of printing places will show the new size and the parts of the image that will be cropped out
@ozziehoffy it really is just up to what you need the image for. If the end product is print, then cropping at a strange ratio is probably not the best. However if its just for digital / web etc, there's not really with aspect ratios that arent 2:3 or 3:4. Think about panoramic shots or images youve seen online that are square.
@ozziehoffy My camera shoots in 2:3 ratio, so if I have to crop I crop because I want to crop, not because I need to crop in that ratio.
Now having said that I also print on A4 which is not a 2:3 ratio. So when I shoot I keep in mind that if my client decides to print on A4 I will not lose a valuable part of the image.
It is good practice to keep some buffer around the edges just in case, but you have to be thinking about this when you take the shot.
I was behind a young mother at the walmart photo centre and she was fighting with the lady behind the counter. She wanted to know why every photo of her baby had part of it's head cut off when she enlarged them. The photo lady kept a cool head and tried her best to explain it to her but she just didn't get it. She got ticked and said that she was going to take her business elsewhere, because it wouldn't happen anywhere else. I was biting my tongue the whole time!
I would save them all jpeg, full frame and just give them the heads up that, when printing, to watch the crop.
@toast I don't think it works like that at walmart....not that I've seen anyway. When you change the crop on those machines, it has a big exclamation mark to let you know the comp has to be fixed. People expect magic from the instant/1hour kodak machines...it just doesn't happen.
@shutterbugger ah ok, yeah i've not been to walmart. I've only used these machines at jessops here in the UK so when you load up the images, they tell you if the ratio is off and then gives you options on resizing like.. fit it all in or crop
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Resizing the dimensions of an image to be smaller is a huge no-no if the image is being printed.
The caveat : if they're good friends... resize to about 768 x 512 or something suitable small enough for them to upload a few images to facebook or whatever.
Regarding the various sizes of print... dont both cropping to account for this, leave it as is. Dont try to pre empt what may or may not happen, leave it as a decision to be made at time of print. Most software at the printers will be able to crop find and they wont notice the difference
For bulk operations try irfan view thumbnails.
I also let them know that I take no responsibility for the quality of print - this is because they may print the images on printers that may not be colour corrected for the images and they may print them in a different ratio than what they were designed for. The print quality is also determined by the quality of the paper and if they print on cheap paper through a cheap printer then they may get prints which may not look like they digital images.
I always push my clients for me to print their images for these reason. The last thing I want to happen is that they take my images, print them out and they look like rubbish and I get the blame.
I also give them strict licence agreement where they can not sell or distribute the image for anything other than non-commercial purposes.
Of course for me I am in the business of making money from my images so I handle it a bit differently.
@ozziehoffy it really is just up to what you need the image for. If the end product is print, then cropping at a strange ratio is probably not the best. However if its just for digital / web etc, there's not really with aspect ratios that arent 2:3 or 3:4. Think about panoramic shots or images youve seen online that are square.
Now having said that I also print on A4 which is not a 2:3 ratio. So when I shoot I keep in mind that if my client decides to print on A4 I will not lose a valuable part of the image.
It is good practice to keep some buffer around the edges just in case, but you have to be thinking about this when you take the shot.
@eyesofbetsie
I would save them all jpeg, full frame and just give them the heads up that, when printing, to watch the crop.