Why are my images getting the chop? 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 photographer’s 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. The historical print size ( 6x4) was designed to cope with prints from film cameras that take images at a 3:2 ratio, which is more rectangular. Digital Cameras take images at a ratio of 4:3, which is more square, hence an immediate problem for the digital enthusiast. In order to cope with this situation there are two alternatives as described below. STANDARD As standard Digital Prints 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 ones head.

FIT- IN When photos are particularly FULL FRAME, we 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.

If you wish to print the FULL FRAME size, it is available, but you must select it. For 8x10 enlargements this is not an issue as it is very close to the 4:3 ratio that digital cameras use. *Some cameras have the option of switching to the 3:2 ratio of traditional 6x4" prints.