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I’m not sure if you’ve seen it – maybe it’s just the photography circles I’m in – but with our current “quarantine” state, there are a lot of suggestions out there as to how we should fill all of our newly empty social calendars. Tell me I’m not alone: you’ve seen the posts from people saying, “Go for a walk!” “Play a board game!” “Do those home improvement projects you’ve been putting off!” – ideas to help get us thru this time of “social distancing”, right?
Well, another popular suggestion is for people to work on getting some of their photos printed. Whether those are engagement & wedding photos, senior portraits, family photos – you name it, we all have photos we need to buckle down & get printed!
I am all for this suggestion (seriously, take an evening & order some prints – what are you waiting for?!) but do me a favor & make sure you do ONE QUICK THING before you press the “checkout” button:
DOUBLE CHECK YOUR CROPS
Let me explain: without getting too nerdy, photos are taken in a certain aspect ratio (either 2:3 or 4:5, depending on your camera) and when you have images printed, our standard sizes of 4 x 6, 5 x 7, and 8 x 10 don’t follow along with the original aspect ratios. Confused? It’s okay, seeing is believing, so let me show you what I mean!
Let’s take this awesome bridal party photo from Lauren & Joe’s wedding this past spring. (Can we just talk about how crazy adorable their flower girl & ring bearer were?!)
This is the original file that my camera produced. If they decided to print this image as a 4 x 6, this is exactly what the image would look like – no cropping done.
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Okay, so unless you are the scrapbooking type or you’re simply slipping these photos into the plastic sleeve of a pre-made album, you probably aren’t printing many 4 x 6 photos. After all, that’s pretty small. If you are printing for display, you probably will be starting around size 5 x 7 – perfect to put in a frame & set on a desk or shelf.
Now, I went ahead and took my original image & cropped it to a 5 x 7 print. If you look closely, you’ll notice a tiny bit of the image is cut off of both sides. You can’t tell? Look at the wooden pews in the photo above, and then take note of those same wooden pews in the image below (this is like one of those “how many differences can you find” puzzles!)
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You might say: “Well, Kara, that’s not so bad.” And you’d be correct: the 5 x 7 crop usually doesn’t cut off too much noticeable footage.
But then we make the jump from the perfect-for-your-desk size of 5 x 7 to the hang-on-the-wall size of 8 x 10. Notice how close the crop comes in on this one? Again, if you can’t quite tell, look at the wooden pews above and notice how they’re just about completely gone below!
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Okay, it’s still a bit tricky to really see, so let me show you once again, this same image, but instead of actually cropping it, let me show you with lines where the crops would fall. If you were struggling a little bit to figure this out above, the image below will clear it all up.
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The whole reason your images are cropped is because of their aspect ratio. Some brilliant mind (not) over at the frame factory back-in-the-day, decided to change up the sizes and make things difficult for everyone (thanks a lot George – just kidding, I have no idea if “George” was the one to come up with this nonsense). But that leads me to my point:
Every time you have images printed (outside of a 4 x 6) please, check the crop!
No matter where you get your images printed, the lab’s ordering system will automatically crop your photo, and here’s where the tricky part comes in, it’s up to you to double-check that the crop is okay.
Do you notice that in this particular image, the group is not perfectly centered? You can’t really tell in the original crop, but you can definitely see how I had to center the crops in the last image. If you had simply let your printing lab automatically crop this image to the center of the original – that last groomsman would be missing his shoulder. But by manually adjusting the crop, I can make sure that his entire body is in the printed photo.
Additionally, on Lauren & Joe’s wedding day, if I had taken just one step closer to this group when I took this photo, the 8 x 10 crop would cut into the bridesmaids & groomsmen on the outside of the group. In other words, now you know why I always do my best to leave extra space on the edges of your images, especially when taking large family photos! Sometimes it simply can’t be helped, but when all possible, I do my best to leave that extra space so that you can have your images printed in any aspect ratio your little heart desires.
Alright – aspect ratio lesson over. Go print your photos! And when you do, I’d love it if you would post a photo of your printed products on social media & tag me so I can see!!
