Do you try to crop to conventional ratios?

IE, to a ratio that can be printed on regular sizes of paper. Or, do you crop to where you like it and so what if it is 7x8 or 3x7 etc.

I fall into the latter camp, I crop to where I like the result, little to no regard to what Walgreens or WalMart will reformat as. I do not print except via smugmug and even that is rare.

But, often family and friends will want a copy of an image to print, and they can be disappointed when the resultant print is no longer formatted as they remember it, having been forced on to a 5x7 or 4x6, etc. by WalMart's AI?

IN the old days, photo labs had instructions like "mount regardless" and "print as is."

2 questions: do you crop to keep a conventional aspect ratio, or to how you like it...and

If you crop "how you like the composition regardless of conventional aspect ratios," what instructions do you give a lab when printing that will show the entire image, even if that means wide margins of "wasted paper?"

 

TIA

The irony of film formats like 24x36mm and print paper at 8x10" has not been lost on generations of photographers going back to the 1930s.

 

Crop, or print the full frame and trim the print to fit (mat the image in the frame).

 

Then there is the question of whether crops should be done to the "golden ratio" of 1.61803398875....

I seem to do a lot of 16:9 stuff for monitor backgrounds. Other than that, I crop however it looks good because few images get printed these days.

I do all my own printing - usually print to paper size. I try & compose in the finder, for my big annual charity "job", and my rotating ongoing home photo display, that works. Occasionally I will print in full and trim, or print a panorama and trim. I like the results I get with Costco 8.5 x 11 printer paper using a Canon Pixma Pro 100, and though I have 2 Pro grade trimmers from former days, I rarely dig them out of hibernation. Trims are usually when I print 13 x 19.

Thats a question to be decided individually. I am sure that it would feel right to me, to crop at least 2 images in a row to paper before I encounter another one, that demands it's sheet to get trimmed.

FTR: I am a somewhat sloppy primes shooter; not the kind of guy who wants to compose square images in his Fuji's EVF and sets the camera to that format. I rather struggle to bring something home and make the best out of it over there.

I try not to crop at all, working to "get it right in camera." I then print to the original aspect ratio and use a window mat to "trim" the paper size to the viewing size that I want.

Yep, mostly 4:5, 5:7, and 16:9. Rarely 1:1 and 4:3. Don't have paper sizes in mind when cropping though as I rarely print.

I grew up in the "world of print," long before digital cameras came about. So I learned to shoot to a format; otherwise one was throwing paper away.

 

Of course, not everything "wants" to fit to a standard format, so sometimes you have to break that rule. Historically, in the US, standard paper sizes have been along the line of 8x10 inch, or roughly 5x7 inch format. (Larger sizes, up to 16x20 inch or so, fit that range.) So if you wanted a non-standard-size you would typically be buying a standard-size paper and trimming it down.

 

I still tend to work that way, even with digital. Except that for website use I'll typically crop just to the important part of the subject.

 

Ps, when I say "shoot to a format," perhaps I should mention that I made a full-time living in, or related to, "people photography." So what you try to do is to arrange groups or pose people to fit those standard formats. If it's something where you don't have much control, well, you do what you have to.

 

There's still an advantage to the standard formats in that one can buy off-the-shelf mattes and frames. But if you don't do enough work for this to be a big deal it doesn't make much difference.

INteresting comments, all. Thanks. It does seem that most here compose for the screen, so cropping aspect is not an issue as on print.

If you are going to have a commercial print made, is there a specific phrase that labs understand meaning that you want the whole image printed on whatever size of paper is needed to, say for example, the "long side" of the print to be 13"?

It is of course a tried and true maxim to crop in the viewfinder and zoom with your feet, but sometimes you just can't and sometimes you get home and are in post and you see a part of the image that just appeals. This was in the corner of a set up shot for a headboard in an antiques garage outside of Barcelona. I wasn't thinking about 8x10 or 5x7 in Lightroom, but just to compose it. I would not want some robot lab tech to recompose it for me.

Crop to what suits the image, then trim the paper to fit, film or digital.

 

If a printer recropped my image, I'd be asking for it to be printed again, until they got it right.

 

I try to get it right in camera, but sometimes that will be with the intent of cropping the final image. I don't change my EVF format, but it's something I'd consider assigning to a custom button.

 

If I was shooting to print commercially, yes, I'd shoot to paper and crop or mask my viewfinder to suit.

The irony of film formats like 24x36mm and print paper at 8x10" has not been lost on generations of photographers going back to the 1930s.

 

Crop, or print the full frame and trim the print to fit (mat the image in the frame).

 

Then there is the question of whether crops should be done to the "golden ratio" of 1.61803398875....

 

 

Nice shot. Have you considered converting it to BW? :)

When I intend to show on my UHDTV, I compose at 16:9.

Cropping is essential when framing and printing, and nearly universal for publication. I don't have much control over the latter, but for public or private display it's important that you take charge of the process, and not leave it to an inexperienced tech working at a mini-lab. The same for color control.

 

It's a good idea to mount and matte photos for framing. Mounting keeps the print flat and matting keeps it from touching the glass. While frames come in standard sizes, you can cut the matte any way you wish. The borders don't have to be even, and seldom are, just symmetrical. For best accuracy, I always print leaving a border around the cropped image area. I do this precisely, using the "Canvas Size" tool in Photoshop. This is one area in which Photoshop does better than Lightroom. "Borderless" printing, at home or in a lab, arbitrarily crops up to 1/4" from the image. If you make the effort to manage the edges when shooting, why blow it in the presentation? When cutting the matte, showing a little white on the print can serve as a double-matte. That border, however, should be uniform.

My impression is that less and less photos are making it to print these days so the old restrictions no longer apply. I try to keep everything to the 2/3 ratio if possible because thats what I'm used to.

Good thread. I don't do a lot of printing except the annual photo book I create for my wife every year for Mother's Day. But there's no way to know while taking the pics if or how they would end up being in displayed in that book. Cropping is inevitable but generally not too much of a problem. Occasionally I do end up not using a picture I had initially selected because I couldn't combine it with other photos on a page in a way that I liked, - and mostly that would be due to having to crop it in a way that loses too much.

 

When I do make a larger print of an individual picture, it is sometimes a pain to have to deal with standard print sizes. I have a matte cutter and have used that to get around the problem.

 

I've also seen people add borders or fake mattes to the image itself to pad it out to a standard print size. It's another opportunity for some creativity. Text and/our flourishes of all sorts could be included. It won't protect a photo the way a real matte would.

Edited October 29, 2019 by tomspielman

This question pops up from time to time, and I always find it hard to understand the issue, since both paper aspect ratios and sensor aspect ratios are arbitrary. For that matter, the aspect ratios of different paper sizes are different. 8 x 10 is 1.25:1. 13 x 19 is 1.46:1. Would you crop the image differently if you decided to print on a larger paper? If it looks really good to you with an aspect ratio of 1.46:1 on a 13 x 19 print, would you decide you have to crop material anyway to fit the arbitrary aspect ratio of 8 x 10 paper? The aspect ratio of MFT cameras is 4:3, while for FF and APS-C, it's 3:2. Would you you want the image to have a different aspect ratio if you changed which camera you are using?

 

The only time I worry about consistent aspect ratios is if there is a reason I have to--e.g., if a display calls for a consistent frame. Even then, however, I will often use different aspect ratios for the prints and compensate with the mat dimensions.

For me, the image dictates the crop, not the other way around. A lesson I was taught by a pretty good photographer named Jay Maisel. And do see the film about him moving from his amazing Bank Building (Jay Myself).