In the digital world, what you see is not always what you get. With control of the shape and size of an image now back in the photographers hands, prints that you get done by your professional photo service may not always be quite what you expected.
The challenge is to find a standard print size that will fit your image. But that sounds far to long winded for what virtually always ends up as being the issue of cropping.
Cropping, or the trimming of an image occurs when the image ratio and print ratio varies. Most of the historical print sizes (e.g. 6x4", 8x12") were designed to cope with prints from film cameras that take images at a 3:2 ratio. Most Digital Cameras take images at a ratio of 4:3 by default, hence an immediate problem for the digital enthusiast. Read more about photo sizes and ratios.
As standard Garrett & Lane will take the chosen print size, in this example a 6x4" photo, and fill it with the requested image (an image taken from a digital camera). This unfortunately means that 13mm is cropped from the top and bottom of the photo. In most situations this is not a problem, but if your photos are particularly full frame, then you may lose the top of a loved one's head.
When specifically instructed, Garrett & Lane will Fit-in the whole image to the requested print size. In our example this means that the photo will have white blocks down two sides of the print and the size of the image will be reduced. This can be useful when you are struggling for quality, but not good when you want to frame the print in a standard sized frame. In future we hope to offer both square and panoramic sizes as standard.
In some cases new print sizes have been created to cope with the needs of the growing number of digital camera users. The example shows our 4:3 ratio digital camera image fitting perfectly into a 4x5.33" photo. 6x4.5" (where available) and 8x6" are other exact print sizes for digital cameras, but there are as yet no larger print sizes to suit the 4:3 image ratio.
1017 Virginia Street, Columbus, GA 31901