Cropping Digital Photos for Holiday Cards
Each year at Therese Saint Clair we help hundreds of families select a holiday photo card for their traditional holiday greeting. For the most part, our clients will mount a 4″x 6″ family photograph on a photo card that they have had personalized by one of our many fine paper companies. In some cases the photograph has been taken by a professional photographer, but generally a friend or family member has taken a family portrait with a point-and-shoot digital camera.
While most digital images produce very high quality photographs, we occasionally run across a few problems when it comes to cropping. For reasons that are far beyond my level of technical competence, the “aspect ratio” of a digital camera is different to the traditional 35mm camera. Specifically, the 35mm camera has an aspect ration of 3:2, which will reproduce a 6″ by 4″ photograph with no distortion. Unfortunately the point-and-shoot digital camera has an aspect ratio of 4:3 (does not apply to digital SRL’s).
What this means is that when you take your digital image to a commercial printer it will automatically crop your digital image to create a 6″x 4″ photograph. In effect you lose just under half an inch (about 10%) of the image off the top for a horizontal photograph. While you might think that you can easily correct this in a photo editor and crop the photo to the desired size, it will inevitably create a distortion in your photo since the aspect ratio will change. Found below are two images. The first image is the actual digital image as seen in your photo editing program, the second image is the actual 4″x 6″ photograph reproduced at your local photo store. This image comparison is courtesy of Ritz Photo in downtown Greenwich.
Actual Digital Image
Cropped Digital Image after Resizing
Perhaps an experienced photographer can crop to size and preserve the aspect ratio, but most of us do not have the time or experience. For those of us who prefer to avoid frustration, we suggest that you leave an extra margin of space around your desired image so that it may be cropped to size without losing the top of someone’s head. If anyone has a better solution, please let me know.
Richard May
Founding Member
January 30th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
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