Hi, Bill. Welcome!
Most digital cameras default to an image aspect ratio of 4:3, whereas a 6×4 has an aspect ratio of 3:2.
Without modification, a 4:3 image printed with the short side at 4" will be
5.33" in the long dimension. The same image printed with the long side as
6" will be 4.5" in the short dimension.
I believe that your images are printing like the first example, and you are seeing white space which is the difference between your 6" paper and the
5.33" image.
In order to completely fill your 6×4 paper, you will have to crop your image to the same shape. You can do this with the Crop tool or the Rectangular marquee tool, by entering the appropriate values in the Width and Height fields for each tool on the Options bar.
If you need more guidance using the tools, post back!
HTH,
Byron
Bill,
Tell us about your printer. Can it produce a borderless print, or does it require a margin for the mechanical process. I have two printers that behave like yours. I have a paper cutter to trim away the excess – resulting in a not so perfect 4×6.
You can try the following to see if it helps:
1. Set your print size at 6×4 by cropping
2. In the print preview window, Scale Print Size, scale at 96%
3. Then go to position window, and set the "left" indicator at 0.30cm.
4. The result is a full picture, very slightly reduced, but you get a very close even border all around. You may have to adjust these settings for your purpose. This may help.
Let us know how you make out.
Ken
Thanks…I will try both methods. My printer is an Epson RX500 which has a border less setting. Interestingly, not all pictures exhibit this phenomena but I can’t determine which ones will not have this problem until I get to print preview while printing. Is there anyway I can change the aspect on a Canon S30?
Thanks in advance,
Bill Graham
wrote
…Is there anyway I can change the aspect on a Canon S30?
Bill,
According to the S30 information at dpreview, your three image size options are 1600×1200, 1024×768 and 640×480… all of which are 4:3.
Byron
No, Bill, you’ll have to crop for a perfect 4 X 6. I have the S30, and take all of my pictures at highest quality and lowest compression, then here’s what I do: Immediately resize to 330ppi, which gives you an image as close to a perfect 4 X 6 as you’ll get. Choose the rectangular marquee tool, set it to Fixed Size 6 X 4, click on the image, move the "marching ants" until they’re encompassing the part you want to keep, and then go to Image>Crop. It’s really fast once you get used to doing it, and there isn’t much cropping needed. However, you do wind up with a perfect size. I can run through a bunch of new image files in nothing flat because I spent time early on figuring out what ppi would get me where I wanted to be. Printing at that res is a touch higher than what’s usually recommended as the target, but it’s not so much higher that you wind up wasting system resources or time.
Beth, that’s a great technique; sounds like it would be a good Action for full PS!
🙂
Yeh, and someday I’ll even figure out how to do it! I haven’t had near as much time to play with CS as I thought I would. I keep trying to tell the world to go away and let me play with my Adobe stuff, but it ain’t been listening. 🙁
Yeh, and someday I’ll even figure out how to do it! I haven’t had near as much time to play with CS as I thought I would. I keep trying to tell the world to go away and let me play with my Adobe stuff, but it ain’t been listening. 🙁
If you can’t beat them, join them… Buy them their own version of the software. In a flash, they won’t come to you anymore, they’ll be addicted as well 🙂
Ray
No, unfortunately the world around me could care less about digital imaging. It has other tasks to attend to – and they’re much less fun!
Beth,
Following your work flow, do you then cut off the white border with a paper cutter, leaving a picture 4×6 in., or does your printer produce a borderless print?
Over the 4 years that I have been using this program, I never have been able to produce a borderless print because my printers require a leader, and I have been unable to come up with a methodology to have a uniform white border around the picture even after cropping to 4×6. Hence I have employed the paper cutter to tidy up.
Ken
My printer doesn’t do borderless, but using my workflow the print itself comes out at a perfect 4 X 6. I then trim them, but I don’t ever leave a white border. If someone has a printer capable of borderless printing my method should work just fine. I think the original poster was getting that white space because of the aspect ratio of his original image.
If I ever wanted a perfect 4 X 6 including the white border, I’d have to do it like you do. And I’m too lazy. And, of course, I’m also too cheap to buy the 4 X 6 paper in the first place. 🙂 For almost a year now I’ve been getting 4 X 6 prints made at Costco, because 19 cents a print is just too good a deal to pass up. I do print a few myself, but if the picture is anything I want to have last for a while I go the Costco route.
Beth,
Thanks for the amplification. I had pictures from my last trip printed at CVS on their machine, and was very satisfied. I had worked on some of the pictures in Elements, copied them to a CD, and put that in their machine.
Ken
Yeh, I find that method better suited to what I want, too. I don’t usually put them on a CD, though. I edit the photos, put them back on one of my CF cards and just take them in on that. Since all of the originals are already on my hard drive, I skip the CD burn until later.
When I hear people talk about these truly amazing photos they can print with their printers I get a bit envious. But then I start adding up the costs and just can’t justify replacing a printer that’s still doing fine for what I want, especially since the longevity is much better when the photos are printed commercially. Maybe if I had fewer projects on my plate I’d enjoy the challenge, but that’ll have to wait until another year. Or decade.
The CF card is very delicate and expensive, and I am reluctant to insert it in to a public machine over which I have no control – perhaps unwarranted paranoia on my part. The CD is cheap, or free at times.
Ken
Beth…thank you ever so much…that does the trick. By the way, which digital cmeras allow one to adjust the aspect ratio…any of the Canon’s?
Once again thanks to all for their input.
Bill Graham
Bill,
I have Olympus c-750 uz. I can record in:
TIFF 2288×1520 (3:2)
JPEG 2288X1520 (3:2)
Ken
Bill, as far as I know, camera manufacturers pick an aspect ratio for a specific camera model and don’t allow the user to change it. If I’m wrong, at least one person will jump in to correct me, but I’ve never heard of being able to choose the aspect ratio for any camera, Canon or otherwise.
Beth, there are a few cameras out there that give you a 3:2 in addition to a 4:3. However, they do it by masking out part of the CCD. You get less total pixels, so I think I’d prefer cropping.
wrote in message
Beth, there are a few cameras out there that give you a 3:2 in addition to
a
4:3. However, they do it by masking out part of the CCD.
Chuck,
That’s exactly how it works on my Sony F717. The max resolution is 2560×1920, which is 4:3. There is a 2560×1712 setting, as well, which is 3:2.
Like you, I’d rather do my own cropping, so I never use the setting. As far as I’m concerned, they could have left out ALL of the lower-resolution choices on the camera, because I don’t use those, either.
Byron
Byron, I’m with you re the lower resolution choices. I guess I might use them if I was out somewhere with only one CF card and it was rapidly filling – but then I’d probably review what I had taken and weed out some of the 90% of images that should be trashed anyway….
🙂
As Chuck pointed out there are several Cameras that do it. Some Kodak cameras give that option. They sell a printer dock for most of their models, so I am sure that’s the reasoning behind giving up the 3:2 option.
<
http://www.pbase.com/image/28516774>
JP
JP, that makes sense; if you’re going straight from camera or media card to print and are using 4×6 photo paper, the 3:2 camera option would make sense.
I’ve been looking at a printer that will do that (has ports for several types of media cards) but I know that unless I undergo some magical transformation as a photographer, not one of my pictures will ever be printed without going through PS/PSE first…
Chuck
I keep trying to tell the world to go away and let me play with my Adobe stuff, but it ain’t been listening.
Amen to that !!!!!!!!!!!!
