We’ve all been there. The shot looked great on your camera’s LCD and on the computer, but when you get the prints back, the subject isn’t cropped right. What a hassle!
Things were simple with 35mm film photography; in digital, camera manufacturers have adopted a variety of sensors in different shapes. When printed at traditional sizes, these images can be poorly cropped or have a white stripe on the sides. The common dimension is a 4:3 ratio, like an HD TV; traditional print areas are either a bit too wide on one side or too long on the other.
Here are a few tips to get perfect prints the first time.
- When snapping a photo, make certain important subject is not close to the bottom, top, or sides of the frame.
- Resist the urge to zoom very close on your subject, especially kid pictures. This gives you the flexibility to try different compositions when uploading your picture to 1 Hour Photo. Sometimes a picture can improved with different cropping; if your subject is too close, you won’t have room to crop. Sometimes an average picture in 4×6 size can look incredible as an 8×10.
- Look for a print size conforming exactly to your image size, which can typically be 4×5., 4.5×6, or 6×8. 1 Hour Photo also offers Instagram-format prints!
- In many digital cameras, you can set the format to correspond to print sizes, like 4×6, if you know ahead of time you will only be using that size.