Cropping vs Framing

<i>I assume everyone has severly cropped an image and printed it large, only to see an obvious degrading in the quality of the print compared to others printed from a full frame capture.</i><p>

 

This is very dependent on the image content. Some photos need sharpness to work and some don't. For those that don't, it doesn't matter.<p>

 

<i> If you're shooting strictly for internet uploads, you can get away with a lot, since you're looking at 72 dpi rather than 300. </i><p>

 

I don't know how many times it has to be said, but 72 dpi is <b>irrelevant</b>. Want to see this? Look at an image with the screen set to 1024x768. Then look at it with the screen set to 1280x1024 (or some other high resolution.) The setting of the image is irrelevant, the number of pixels displayed on the screen real estate is. Or, take the same image and keep the pixel dimensions identical, and set it at 1 dpi and 10000000000000dpi. It dispalys exactly the same on the screen. Forget 72dpi, it's a relic of the past. The distant past, promoted by Adobe, for some arcane reason, and people who haven't thought it through.

Are you saying that the resolution requirements are the same for web display and printing? My son's digital P&S captures jpegs at 72 dpi, yet I never considered printing them at the default 28X21. Yet you could upload a crop that is 1/16 the size of the original and it would look fine on your monitor.

 

I agree that edge to edge sharpness should not be considered a requirement of all images, but images that don't require anothing in the frame to be sharp are surely the exception for most shooting styles. Better to get in the habit of composing in the viewfinder knowing what you want to be sharp. Severe crops and blurry images should be done selectively rather than as a default style from the outset unless you're quite sure you know where you're going and why.

 

. . a bit like playing atonal music without a basic knowledge of chord changes.

I can't say why the camera defaults to 72dpi. But there is certainly no reason to use any specific dpi setting for screen display. It's irrelevant. It is, obviously, relevant to printing, where inches matter.

Jeff, I found a great site once about the irrelevance of the number of pixels for the web, but isn't that just half the story....it's the relationship of the dpi to the size (inches or whatever) that matters.

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A 300 dpi photo which is 8"x 10" is going to be quite an upload, but a 300 dpi photo at 2" x 1.5" is going to load just fine, and look really good too.

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The same photo.....<div></div>

There are two circumstances for cropping, i'd say. One is, when you see that it would look better with a longer lens or different format, etc, so you shoot it with what you have and crop it later accordingly. There's the second case, when you look at the full negative/proof and you just see that it's bad. So you start to crop things off here and there.

 

None of the above is, i think, worse or more unethical or whatever than the other. But the use of the second one might show less photographic experience.

 

And Mike Johnston's way of writing is, sometimes, a little bit extreme. (That's also fine; that's what he's good at, throwing up the ball for a game.) By the way, a quick example: recently i've seen an exhibition (Man Ray and Lee Miller) where some original contact prints made by Man Ray were also exposed. Guess what: a lot of them had multiple cropping marks made with ink.

Well said Jeff:

 

"Forget 72dpi, it's a relic of the past. The distant past, promoted by Adobe, for some arcane reason, and people who haven't thought it through."

 

This has been annoying me for too long !

I think that most of you missed the point about Johnston's cropping rant. He was obviously speaking of some of the very poor one shots one often sees in galleries and the "critique" they get. Inexperienced critiques often suggest tighter crops or tings like that, even though the problem is much more fundamental.

 

In short, I think that Johnston's argument was that talking about cropping was moot as long as lighting, exposure, focusing, choice of angle and other critical factors were not addressed. A bad picture is a bad picture and no amount of cropping is going to save it.

 

We could pretty much say the same about a lot of overused Photoshop filters - no filter abuse is going to turn a poor picture into a good one, at least for the trained eye. And many of the effects people find "cool" were already thought to be clichés in the 1970's...

I agree with Phillipe, in that I think Mike Johnston was basically saying that no amount of cropping will improve an image that just doesn't have it anyway. I did get the impression from his article that he was also referring to fact that the type of critiquing that you get in an amateur forum is mostly opinions and personal taste stuff rather than the informed obsevations of a trained artist.

 

I rarely crop shooting 4x5, probably because I spend enough time moving the camera around and getting the framing just right. With smaller formats I tend to shoot people and other moving targets, so I can't always get the framing I want, hence, some cropping is often needed to extract the image I was after in terms of balance, tension and directing the viewer's eye within the frame.

"Improving photographs has nothing at all to do with cropping differently, of course. Not even remotely."

 

That's what he said. He's a writer, and he put that single sentence in a separate paragraph to remove it from the context of the discussion of photo critique sites.

 

I know he can be provocative, but his writing style is also very precise.

 

It's true that cropping won't fix a dull image, and it's also true that many cropping suggestions on a good image are really an alternative presentation, rather than an improvement . . . and some suggestions can even make it worse (which he pointed out).

 

I think he's mostly objecting to people who think of cropping as the first way of interacting with an image with the mindset of improving it. It's all too common and, yes, often misguided (sometimes you can actually here the groan coming from the back of the room at camera club competitions.)

I think that Mike's article was primarily about the suffocating effect of conformity and the fact that so many folks are into conformity, stuffing it down other people's faces and their photographs. Right now I remember a painting called "the scream" and apply it to my frustration level with photo.net as I see it right now with the posted images.....picking apart Mike's article as "he seems to be saying" is missing the point. There's no "seeming" or re-interpretation required. He's making a general point, and I find it valid.

Its a personal decision which I don't intend to impose on anyone else, HOWEVER, in 35 mm photography It's FULL FRAME or NO FRAME and black line borders to emphasize the point. Further, I have yet to crop a square image. I have cropped 2 6x7 negatives because it was physically impossible for me to move to the desired location;both of these crops eliminated less than 15% of the photo. I take full credit for everything in the frame whether it be good, bad, or ugly. For 35mm work if a "crop" is needed, I simply blew the shot.

My opinion is this:

 

I believe that the stress of not cropping an image evolved from professional situations where the slides/negatives would be handed over for publishing or in a situation such as wedding photography where it is common to "surrender" the negatives. After all, what self respecting professional would want to show a client a frame full of anything other than the intended subject? Also, as many professionals do not do thier own printing, it is one less thing to have to communicate to the printer.

 

That said, I am not by any means a professional. If I see a shot, I take it. If I am unable to properly compose a shot due to the limits of my lenses (monetary limits), I crop the print. Hopefully the crop is small enough that I don't loose anymore sharpness than absolutely necessary (unless, as said, the subject does not require absolute sharpness).

 

Perfect composition is certainly something worth striving for. I fear, however, that this practice may fall victim to the digital age (even amongst professionals), as it is easy to crop a digital file before forwarding to the client without them being the wiser. Of course, professionals have been scanning negs for years, so this fear is probably either well in effect or completely unsubstantiated.

Mike Johnston has written on cropping in his SMP column before it was picked up by photo.net. On Oct 27, 2002 (available on the Luminous Landscape), he says:

 

"If the subject of a picture is too cleanly isolated, too efficiently cropped, it makes me feel existentially antsy. I feel it makes me look like a guy who doesn't know or isn't willing to acknowledge that the frame excludes a great deal and that the world outside of the frame is a hodgepodge, the picture merely a choice view plucked from the continual visual drone of the mundane, the banal, and the ordinary."

 

To my mind, it's clearly absurd to say you should never crop. Some excellent examples have been given regarding different format aspect ratios and limitations of your lenses. Notwithstanding Mike's free standing paragraph denouncing cropping, I suspect he would agree.

 

Where he has a problem, IMO, is the uninformed suggestion to crop almost for the sake of cropping. If you want to improve photographs, there are many other things to work on first. And I think we all agree that you should ideally crop as much as possible in the camera.

 

If you always find yourself whacking off huge chunks of your photos after exposure, something is amiss. You may need a different focal length, or format. Or maybe you need to learn to see better.

 

Problem is, I know where to buy a new lens, but I'm having a hell of a hard time learning to see...

Would I advocate framing if at all possible........absolutely.<br><br>Would I advocate cropping when necessary..........absolutely.<br><br>Would I advocate cropping to the point of grain (when not wanted), or fuzzy detail (when not wanted)........absolutely not.<br><br>

 

The photographic process is not over until the print is made.

the man wjho wrote the peice in the paper is a dinosaur from Gondwana

and hte cretacious period. what makes him the authority? his coment makes me mad because I can do whatever I want to my photograps adn I don't need him or anyone only myself to tell me how to be a photographer. even doctors are creative in there surgery. thats how new techniques are found. the only thing the man is good for is upchucking from his mouth to fillup his newspaper. if the man doesnt want to crop then tell him to leave everyone esle alone so they can do what the y want and he can win the I never crop award all by himself I dont care. Pachycephalosaurus

and if hte people askf or a critique and someone says I would crop this then tell the people who ask for the critiqe to shut up because they asked what other pepole would think and dont you think some people would want to corp? so thwey should be quiet and not say what the tyhink becaues cropping is bad, oh no, watch out for the cropping, its bad. woooo owwwooooo. bad. thats a dumm think. More dumness. Pachycephalosaurus If people dont like croping they should only use box cameras like in the old days when it takes 2hours to set your picture up and then you can not crop but hand cameras and 35mms cameras are made for fast picturet aking so cropping is useful. some people make me mad with the stupid things they say about photography. I guess I should fgeel like a inferier photorgapher because I have croped a picture. I dont care if they dont crp thats fine and then everyone can say they ar ebetter for all I care but leave me alone and stop blowing your snot all over me.