Barbara, if an image from your s400, which has a 4:3 ratio printed out as exactly a 4×6, some distortion had to take place. It’s like unchecking the Constrain Proportions in the Image>Resize>Image Size window of Elements. A 4:3 works out to a 4.5 x 6, so a half-inch of that long side had to be squeezed into the other 4 inches. Can you print it at as a 4.5 x 6 and lay them end-to-end to observe the effect?
Chuck
Oh yes, Chuck, I definitely see a difference from the PE version. Isn’t this weird? It’s kind of impressive, in a weird way, how you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t paying attention, but
Chuck, I mean I can look all around the edge (fortunately it has a busy border) and there’s no spot where I can say "Oh yes, here’s the crop" but the shape of the whole pic is changed.
Barbara, in my opinion, distortion is worse than uncontrolled cropping. At least cropping only affects the edges of a photo; distortion affects the whole image. Surprising that a high-end program would do something like that without warning….
iPhoto doesn’t give a warning : PLEASE CROP TO SELECTED PRINT SIZE BEFORE PRINTING OR SOME DISTORTION MAY APPEAR! I’m sure, in my earlier days with iPhoto, I both printed and sent out for prints before I understood the ‘in camera’ ratio vs. print size. But I never noticed any distortion. I now do all my printing from Elements… and then after cropping.
Chuck… I’m not sure if I’d use the words ‘high end program’ to describe iPhoto. It’s main and most ideal function, imo, is still for cataloging. (Good for emailing photos)
Mark, I guess I used ‘high end’ because it’s an Apple product (I believe) with the attendant reputation for top quality!
Barbara,
Am I missing something here. Although this is an interesting fact, does this apply to anyone on this forum? I find iPhoto useful for downloading, storing, organizing, burning copies to CD, emailing, showing a slide show (three days ago I set up my Lapzilla with a slide show of many images from my Grandson’s first year at his first Birthday party-my daughter said all the women told her the images were cute and all the men asked whether she or her husband had the new PowerBook), and putting photos on the web through my .MAC account. I have never edited and/or printed from iPhoto and can never think of the occasion I would do so. PSE is so much better for editing I see no reason to even learn to use those functions in iPhoto and then I print from PSE since I always do at least a little editing before printing. I mention this in the chance I am overlooking something.
Carl
Although this is an interesting fact, does this apply to anyone on this forum?
Well, it does if you print from iphoto. I was just checking to be sure I wasn’t overlooking something, and evidently I am not. The people in this forum are, for the most part, not typical of the people who use iphoto extensively. A LOT of people do all their printing from iphoto even if they edit in PE because it is so much easier to do 4 x6 prints there as opposed to the PE picture package.
And I have to say that iphoto does what it does really well–I can’t tell where the distortion is by looking at any one area of the photo. The softness is more obvious than any skewing of anything in the image.
I am sure that there are many thousands of people who would not find this a problem at all–after all, the pick-up bin at the one hour photo is always full to overflowing.
I am sure that there are many thousands of people who would not find this
a problem at all–after all, the pick-up bin at the one hour photo is always full to overflowing.
Barbara: Do you think the one-hour photo places distort the film-based photos to fit? I think not – the 35 mm ratio is perfect for 4 by 6 – but now you have me wondering…
Oh, no, Chuck. I’m just saying that most people aren’t very sensitive to these kinds of issues-those 29 cent prints suit them just fine.
As it happens I will be talking with some people in the quick film developing business fairly soon. I’ll ask them about that.
Hi, Barbara. Maybe things changed with iPhoto 4 because it looks like an iPhoto 4×6 comes out as 4×5.3 (same as Elements 2.0).
Rather than waste a bunch of paper, I just told iPhoto 4 and Elements 2 to "print" the same photo to a preview (PDF) image. I told iPhoto to print a 4×6, and I told Elements to print an image that was 4 inches high and proportionately scaled horizontally (came out something like 5.3 inches).
In the print dialog boxes, I told both applications to use the same printer driver (Epson 300) but then I did a Print Preview to PDF instead of actually printing them out. I scaled them both to 100% in the Preview application, and both photos had the exact same dimensions.
Maybe it was an iPhoto 2 thing that you’ve discovered.
Thanks, Lou. That’s really interesting, and more what I would have expected to happen.
Barbara: Do you think the one-hour photo places distort the film-based photos to fit? I think not – the 35 mm ratio is perfect for 4 by 6 – but now you have me wondering…
Chuck,
The ratio may be right but 35mm photos do get cropped a bit. I have taken negatives back and had them print again when some subject was cropped off (minor as it was it was important ay the time).
Pete
Barbara, it’s interesting you mentioned this iPhoto image stretching thing today. I just downloaded the new iTunes 4.5 and it creates CD album covers/inserts. The connection? Well, Apple was smart enough to put registration lines on the album so you know where to cut. Still don’t see the connection? (Good, ’cause it’s not obvious!) What iTunes does is stretch the edge of each album cover so it goes a few millimeters past the true edge–so even if you don’t cut a straight line, you won’t get an ugly white line around the edge of your cover. A small touch, of course, but the kind of thing that makes Apple stuff so cool.
One not so cool thing about the new iTunes is that it doesn’t print onto CDs or CD labels. But then I’m thinking Photoshop Elements can take care of that for me. Something along the lines of this:
* Go to print a CD insert from iTunes
* Instead of actually printing it, do a Preview or Save to PDF (oh, sorry, this is a Mac only thing unless you have Acrobat Distiller)
* Use PSE to convert the PDF into a bitmap, then cut out the circle you want to use to print on your CD or CD label
* Use Epson’s CD printing utility to print the circle onto your CD
OK, it’s a little convoluted, but it should be pretty cool.
You got me curious Barb. I fired up iPhoto (4) and PSE and printed the same photo in both. I personally couldn’t see what you’re seeing but I did notice a very slight color shift. Probably due to PSE’s use of color management. The iPhoto print was just slightly darker over all.
Joe
