Why Do Photobox Crop Your Photos even when they are the right size??

Gregeff

Gregeff

Gregeff

Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Hi there,

I just had loads of photos printed by Photobox from my recent trip to India and Nepal. They are mostly very good, however i have noticed that they seem to crop photos even when they are the right size! Grrr. For example i made all of my photos exactly 6"x4" or 6"x4.5" at 300DPI before sending them to photobox. however they still for some reason have cropped them, the extent of which is shown below:

photobox_cropping.jpg


Does anyone know what they do this, or know how I can get them to not do this next time? It is rather annoying as shown above it can ruin the framing of the photo.

Cheers,

Greg
 
Bit odd, they haven't done this to any of mine. They do show you a preview of the framing before you order, does it look right then?
 
Gregeff said:
They are mostly very good, however i have noticed that they seem to crop photos even when they are the right size!
Click to expand...

Ok, let me start by saying that I have no experience of commercial photo printing, but my father, grandfather and wife were all printers, so a bit of knowledge of general commercial printing has rubbed off.

Have a look at any printed book of words and you will notice that the text doesn't go right to the edge. The text has a margin of blank space round it. This is not only because text to the edge just looks wrong but also because it is difficult to print exactly to the edge of a page. For example, in a book that is stapled or bound by sewing, the outer pages are physically wider then the inner pages. The start off the same, but then they are folded in the middle, stitched and the guillotined to give a consistant edge.

If you want a picture in a book that reaches the edge, then the printer must make it oversize so that when he trims with the guillotine, he cuts through the edge of the picture and doesn't leave a slight border. In printing, this is known as a "bled" edge.

Now, when I was a child, photos had a white border. I guess that this meant that you always got the whole image, but there was a white edge to each print. I remember that a popular develop-and-print deal was one big image with two little ones to cut off and give away, all surrounded by white space.

Then, at some time, it became fashionable to have prints "right to the edge" and this trend continues to this day. But to be able to do this, they need to print slightly oversize.

So, you loose a little bit off the edge of every print. And because the lost margin is there to allow for for printing inaccuracies, you can't even rely on the loss being consistant.

I guess the only cures are:
- Leave enough room round your subjects for margin losses
- Prepare your pictures with a white border
- Print your own

Remember that if you want to put the print in a frame then you will loose a little more behind the mount because the opening in the mount is slightly less than the advertised size, so that the photo doesn't fall through.

Andrew
 
They've just added bleed. I've no idea about photo printing but when I used to do artwork and pre-press for a printers and 2mm bleed is the lowest we'd leave if at all possible.

Like Gaffer says, it's impossible to cut bang on down the line without having some bleed.
 
I've found this too and can't explain why. However,
jJust select "Shrink to fit" and you'll get a small border with all the uncropped photo
 
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