Digital Photos

[Couture]

Okay, I admit it, I'm officially an analog person in a digital world. I got this neato digital camera for Christmas. I've taken pictures with it and now, I've downloaded them to my computer. I bought 4x6 glossy paper. I try to print my purty pictures and you know what? They don't fit on the paper. What's up with that?

I never had this problem with film. I dropped it off. I came back in an hour and I had 2 prints ready for me. Simple.

Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Guest]

My guess is that they are not automatically the correct size, and you need to re-size them, using whatever imaging software you have.

Me? I use Adobe Photoshop, but you should have some kind of package that came with your digicam.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Whatever format of film camera you had, film discs, 110, 135 mm, everything except Polaroid prints and any format of slide, you lost a bit of the edges, which were automatically cropped by the lab to fit the paper, either the old 3 1/2X 5 inch or the more recent 4X6 inch standard print size.

Since you are now doing your own printing, you now get to decide what to crop away, to reach the standard print size, or you can decide to print non-standard full image prints.

Have fun!

 

[lucky-E-leven]

There should also be a setting on the camera that controls the size/image quality. Mine goes up extremely high, but I typically keep mine set lower than the highest setting. The quality is still very good around the middle of its range and they take up much less space on my computer when uploaded.

Good luck.

~lucky

 

[Couture]

Whatever format of film camera you had, film discs, 110, 135 mm, everything except Polaroid prints and any format of slide, you lost a bit of the edges, which were automatically cropped by the lab to fit the paper, either the old 3 1/2X 5 inch or the more recent 4X6 inch standard print size.

Since you are now doing your own printing, you now get to decide what to crop away, to reach the standard print size, or you can decide to print non-standard full image prints.

Have fun!

Next you are going to tell me Santa Claus isn't real, right?

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Next you are going to tell me Santa Claus isn't real, right?

Yes, Santa Claus is real, but he has decided that there IS such a thing as a BAD child.

 

[Guest]

Actually the simplest solution may be in your printer settings.

When you print you sould find options to specify paper size AND there should be an option to fit the image to the paper size. Do a little looking around in your printer settings and I'm sure you'l find it.

 

[fifty5]

Okay, I admit it, I'm officially an analog person in a digital world. I got this neato digital camera for Christmas. I've taken pictures with it and now, I've downloaded them to my computer. I bought 4x6 glossy paper. I try to print my purty pictures and you know what? They don't fit on the paper. What's up with that?

I never had this problem with film. I dropped it off. I came back in an hour and I had 2 prints ready for me. Simple.

Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

Expecting a single camera design to be right for every picture you take!

4x6 is simply an historical artefact, due to the 'new' 35mm still camera using movie stock in short lengths and having a frame size that used 2 of the movie frames for 1 still pic. That gave 24 mil by 36 mil, a ratio of 1x1.5.

Actually, for any given photo, that isn't the best ratio. Some need longer and thinner. Some need almost (or even exactly) square - or oval... with a vignette effect... It all depends upon the subject.

In the old chemical days, you either had to pay a lab a small fortune for 'hand-prints', or to pay a bigger fortune for DIY processing gear (or settle for monochrome - as a few still prefer) ... and spend hours and hours, and more hours in your darkroom.

These days you can have as much fun in the 'darkroom' as when clicking the button - and do it without turning the lights off.

You need 2 bits of software:
a) Something to edit the images themselves. This allows you to crop out the bits that don't help the picture - to give whatever shape you feel is best. It'll also allow you to do all sorts of other things that used to need nasty poisonous chemicals and LOTS of time, like changing the colour balance, retouching (in or out) the bits that should/shouldn't have been there and lots of other fun things.
b) something to 'lay out' a 'page' so that an A4 bit of paper can hold as many pics as you want (fewer and bigger, or more and smaller). This'll probably be called a DTP (Desk Top Publishing) program, but with more effort, most WP (Word Processing) progs will do it.

Best of all, you can simply ignore the pictures that turned out crap - and that doesn't cost anything (except a bit of battery drain). There have been photographers who got 36 works of art from a roll of 36, but I don't know any of them. I think I'm 'on a roll' when I get 2 out of 3. 1 in 3 is more usual.

And you can do it REALLY cheap by not printing at all, just putting them on a computer screen (which, if you take a lot, can soon save enough to buy you a VERY nice screen, even a projector!) And in the same vein, you can copy the pics to a CD or DVD that costs a few pence and send them to friends, relatives, etc. - or go the whole hog and publish them on the Web (which is how we share pics of each other with my son who's in China for 2 years - and all our friends), which costs nothing at all (after your ISP bill, that you'll be paying anyway).

The only times that the old fashioned way is better is when you want exhibition quality to hang big enlargements on the wall (and how many of us do that?) or if you want upmpty plonk paper copies of everything on the 'film'.

Digital is different to film. Now that high res digital cameras are affordable, those differences make it far better for all except the exceptions. If you frequently put a 500mm plus (or 20mm minus) lens on your SLR, or use close-up bellows/ super-macro lenses, then, yes, film is still cheaper than digital (digicams with exchangeble lenses/SLR's with digital backs, still cost a mortgage), but there aren't many folk like that.

Are you one of them? If not, don't look for what you've lost, but for what you've gained.

Use up that 6x4 paper and buy some A4 - and put 1, 2, 4, or lots of pics on each page. Forget the rigid old 2x3 aspect ratio and go for what makes each pic right for its subject.

Or, just like the olden days, accept that the print on paper isn't - and never was - exactly what you saw in the viewfinder. There are dedicated photo-printers that churn out the pix just like the cheap labs did, and as I think you've already found, 'ordinary' printers will also do the job. Just remember that the 1-hour labs were flawed as well: compare a few negatives with the prints you got from the labs: as VB said, they never showed everything that was on the neg.

Do it your way. The difference is that 'your way' can be much cheaper than it used to be - and simply taking it as it comes is about the same price and quality as it was in the days of photo-chemical film.

 

[Weird Harold]

Actually the simplest solution may be in your printer settings.

When you print you sould find options to specify paper size AND there should be an option to fit the image to the paper size. Do a little looking around in your printer settings and I'm sure you'l find it.

There is also a setting for "landscape" or "portrait" orientation -- which might be the problem -- trying to print a 4x6 inch picture on 6x4 inch paper (or vice versa)

A typical 640x480 or 800x600 pixel image needs to be rotated 90% to fit the orientation of the 4x6 paper -- setting it to print in "portrait" orientation does this through the Printer settings option.

 

[SnoopDog]

Don't wanna sound precocius but isn't it also possible to take your 'memory stick' or card or whatever to the next photoshop and let it be printed out for you....you know...like professionally ?

Snoopy, wants to buy a digi-cam in the next weeks.

 

[snooper]

It is also much cheaper to experiment with plain paper. I only use good (ie expensive) paper for a very few of my best and most treasured pictures.

Don't wanna sound precocius but isn't it also possible to take your 'memory stick' or card or whatever to the next photoshop and let it be printed out for you....you know...like professionally ? ...

Yes, it is, or you can do what most people do and copy them to a floppy. via your computer.

 

[fifty5]

It is also much cheaper to experiment with plain paper. I only use good (ie expensive) paper for a very few of my best and most treasured pictures.

Yes, it is, or you can do what most people do and copy them to a floppy. via your computer.

Or a CD - far cheaper (per meg) than floppies these days...

Re plain paper, ink is also expensive. We don't waste it on grotty paper that doesn't give a much better (different, but not better) 'draft' than the screen. We reckon that a sheet of printed A4 costs about a quid, but I think the paper is less than half that (though we prefer the matt paper, which is less than half the price of glossy). Burble, mumble, grunt...

 

[fifty5]

...

Off topic, but has anyone told you that the reason "Latest" in your sig isn't red is that you missed the / out of the closing color tag? That should be /color (in the square brackets).

Always trying to help (or should that read "show off"?)

 

[Lovepotion69]

I do a quite a bit of photoediting, saving to CD and having them printed. (Heck, what did you think I do when not on Lit? Work on stories?)

I don't have my own colour printer, but I've used one at school. Normally I just resize the pic so that it'll fit to the A4. And I only printed out on a regular inkjet to get A4s for my wall.
Usually when it comes to regular sized pics I go with them to my local photo store, put in the CD and pick the prints up next day. As the single price is kinda high, I wait until I've collected a bigger amount of images, then have them all printed at the same time. Gets me off cheaper.

If you want to use the store's printer, do edit in Photoshop before. Then take to various stores. When you get the prints (just try with a few in the beginning), compare them to each other and to what it looks like on the screen. In the future, use the store who's prints matches your screen best. It might help if you calibrate your screen first too (Adobe Gamma is a calibration help tool with Photoshop)

Yeah, not the most scientific and theoretically correct way to do it, but that's how I did it. Still trying to figure out how to get the B&W pics ok though.

/LP
P.S I calculated how much money I've saved with my digital camera. I realised with the money I saved on buying film and having it developed, I could afford the Canon 20D and a couple of extra lenses...

 

[fifty5]

As I said before, LP, 'do it your way' - and yours is your own: the best!

The biggest issue is attitude. Adopt, "I'm gunna make this work for me" and you'll be a winner. Stick with, "This doesn't work the way that film did" and you'll be pissed off.

There really isn't any One Best Way (though, just as with darkroom chemistry, a bit of science can help if you wanna get clever).

Take the memory stick to a lab and let them do the worrying.
Use the computer to put the ones you want onto a CD and take that to a lab - and let them worry about everything else.
...
...
Buy a shit hot A3 colour printer, do all the photo-editing and retouching yourself, optimise colour balance, gamma, highlight/midtone/shadow balance, aspect ratio, etc., etc. and print superfine exhibition prints in your own home.

The magic of digital is that every option on that spectrum is available, without enormous expense, or health hazards from toxic chemicals.

My "editing plus page layout software" suggestion was just one point on the spectrum. The one that I like!