Developing Digital Photos

[j3tang]

This might be a newb question, but there's something wrong with my developed pictures.

I've taken some photos with my digital camera and edited them in photoshop to make them in 4x6 ratio in terms of pixels. I get them developed and find that the developed pictures, when compared to the edited to 4x6 ratio pictures, have been cropped slightly on all sides. I can't tell if they've been cropped the same amount on all sides, but i definitely notice the crop.

The 4x6 photos have been developed at Costco as well as BestBuy. This has also happened on 8x10 that were developed.

What am I doing wrong? Or is there even anything wrong with my procedure?

 

[jlcharles]

You arent doing anything wrong. The machines they use magnify the image slightly to make sure you don't get white edges because of paper shift. This is from mpix and explains it better than I could.

Please note: Digital printers have what is called, over sizing. Over sizing is a process in which the image being developed onto the photo paper is magnified by a certain percentage to counteract paper shift within the printer. Photographic paper is loaded into the printers in rolls. As the paper travels from the roll through the machine it can drift up to 1/8 of an inch by the time it reaches the lasers that expose the paper with the image. No amount of calibration on the paper path can prevent this drift. A 1/8 of an inch is about half the radius of the pen or pencil on your desk. The over sizing that is applied to each image runs between 1.5% -1.7%; we generally quote the percentage at 2% for a round number to work with. How can you use this information? Well the over sizing is so minimal, that 99% of your orders will not be effected by it. However, in certain instance where you may have images butted up against the outer edge like in a collage, or a pin stripe around an image's perimeter, you will want to take this 2% value into exception. In most cases you can do very simple math to calculate the expected over sizing. Our message is to add the 2% additional space to the perimeter of any potentially affected image. For regular prints such as an 8x10, the additional leeway your need to provide is a 1/16 of an inch in the 8-inch dimension and 1/5 of an inch in the 10-inch dimension. Of course, the larger the print dimensions, the more image space effected by over sizing, thus the more padding that is needed.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

This might be a newb question, but there's something wrong with my developed pictures.

I've taken some photos with my digital camera and edited them in photoshop to make them in 4x6 ratio in terms of pixels. I get them developed and find that the developed pictures, when compared to the edited to 4x6 ratio pictures, have been cropped slightly on all sides. I can't tell if they've been cropped the same amount on all sides, but i definitely notice the crop.

The 4x6 photos have been developed at Costco as well as BestBuy. This has also happened on 8x10 that were developed.

What am I doing wrong? Or is there even anything wrong with my procedure?

If you are using Costco's online photo system you can do all your cropping on their website. Try using that its works great and appears to be WYSIWYG