Cropping for studio prints

[KamWeng]

Hi all,

For a studio print of 4R (6'x4') digital photo, I'll need 2048x1365 from a 3MP (which is 2048x1536 before crop) right? I wish to know how the studio will crop for me: either...

they use a fully automated machine which crop equally (and mercilessly) both the top and bottom

or

they'll take care of the individual print (i.e. some shots will not suitable for any crop on top, or some shots will have excess plain content most suitable for cropping at the bottom etc)?

Is it best to crop for myself before sending for print?

I'll finally have my photos printed other than by myself after so many years.

Thanks.

 

[chelsea]

Iy's always better to do the cropping yourself rather than leaving it to the shop.

some shops will check every individual pic, but some just don't bother.. even if they check and crop to what they believed to be the best crop, it might not be the best to you, right?

so, do it yourself and everyone will be happy

 

[Sanver]

Minilabs have automated "Fill-in" & "Fit-in" modes. Practically every one uses "Fill-in". "Fill -in" mode means that for a 4R prints, image's width is filled in on 152mm width of paper (4R is 102 x 152mm). Therefore if the image is other than 2:3 Aspect Ratio (most of the digital camera give 4:3 Aspect Ratio), height of the image will be cropped equally.

 

[KamWeng]

Thanks guys.

Do you know any simple software (better still freeware) that do crop jobs easily? You know, cropping out a 1000x800 (for example) from a 2048x1536 is easy, but cropping out a 2048x1365 from a 2048x1536 is another story.

Any software that can let us...
1. define a crop dimension first
2. place a dotted line rectangle over the image and let us drag and place it where we like?

Hope you can understand what I'm trying to say.

 

[KamWeng]

Sorry guys. Just found out that the freeware XnView I'm using has a very nice resizable cropping function. Thanks anyway.