Do you print your photos? How do you deal with different aspect ratios (sensor vs. paper size)

DxO PhotoLab
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It looks like majority of photos people take never get printed :slight_smile: You’d post to Instagram or FB and that’s it.

I want to start Movies series world printing more photos, either by getting my own printe or by using one of the online photo labs.

My question is how to deal with different aspect rations - camera sensor vs paper size. I usually prefer to compose it in camera, bit how do you do it for prints? Do I just keep more space around the subject for cropping ?

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I print (just done some now in fact via an online printer).

I do my prep in Photolab2.1 and Luminar.

I then export the result to Affinity Photo 1.6.5 and use the printing/export tools in that, as well as doing crops, print dpi etc. Affinity also has a soft proof layer, so if you have the paper profile and a calibrated monitor, you can see what your finished print will look like when printed.

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I do all my editing in PL2 and save to the original folder. Then open in Picasa, crop to finish size and print.

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I haven’t done very much of this yet - but what I do in PhotoLab is first get my image the way I want it to look, regardless of aspect ratio; then, create virtual copies for different aspect ratios and crop them or color them according to how I will frame them. If I can’t crop to the aspect ratio of the print, I’ll do what I can in PhotoLab, then bring the image up in Paint.Net (or maybe GIMP in the future), create a frame around the image in the dimensions I need, and fill in the border - either with a solid color or with painted-in details/text/art. Maybe someone can suggest a better approach (using DxO’s tools if possible)? I’d like to learn more about this myself.

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Aspact ratios almost never fit between sensor or paper. Therefore, you need to crop electronically or cut you prints, which needs a sharp knife or appropriate cutter.

My way to go is to add a border that makes ratios fit* - I often have to crop nevertheless…

  • example: Starting with an image of 2x3 units proportion and adding a border of 1/2 unit on each side will give you a 3x4 unit image. Note that this simple trick will give you an image that sits a little bit too close to the bottom edge. For a more elaborated balancing of image and frame, you’d want to add a bit more to the bottom border which necessitates a few iterations to both fit ratios and give a pleasant impression. It is worth though, specially on larger (more costly) prints.
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