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I've edited my pictures and went to print some of them off and burn them to a disc at a Kodak kiosk, and it is cutting off my pictures. Do I need to change format, or what else might be wrong?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Can you explain how they're being cut off? \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    Mar 9, 2012 at 1:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ What size of prints are you making? 4"×6"? And what's your camera? \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    Mar 9, 2012 at 1:20

3 Answers 3

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Unfortunately automated kiosks do stupid things. Get a human to print these things and tell him that what you want out because he cant read your mind.

What is happening is that there is a discrepancy between the aspect ratio of your photos and the aspect ratio of the kiosks output.

For example, the most common print is a 6" x 4" which has a 3:2 aspect ratio. If you shoot with an SLR from anyone but Olympus and Panasonic, then your image starts at the same aspect ratio but if you cropped without the preserve original aspect ratio option on you may still end up with something which is not 3:2. If you shot with a fixed lens camera or an SLD other than from Sony or Pentax, what you usually start with is a 4:3 image. To complicate things further some cameras allow you to shoot in different aspect ratios including 16:9, 5:4 and 1:1.

You can do a number of things, only one of which will work for an automated kiosk:

  1. Edit your images to match exactly the aspect ratio of the print size. With Photoshop and Lightroom, you can enter the ratio right in the interface of the crop tool. Use this for the kiosk.

  2. Instruct the person printing your images to preserve the aspect ratio of your images. This will give you a letter-boxed images (there will be empty space at the sides or above and below).

  3. Ask the the paper to be trimmed to the aspect ratio of your images. This may cost more and not an option everywhere but it gives the cleanest results. So if you print a 4:3 image you will end up with a 4" x 5 1/3" print instead of a 4x6.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Yet another option is to pick a print size with aspect ratio matching the photos (such as 13x10 cm for 4:3 images). \$\endgroup\$
    – Imre
    Mar 9, 2012 at 10:48
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Imre: probably not an option at the kiosk. \$\endgroup\$
    – mattdm
    Mar 9, 2012 at 13:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mattdm depends on model, there certainly are kiosks that do support multiple formats (the smallest size for 4:3 seems to be 6x8 on this one) \$\endgroup\$
    – Imre
    Mar 9, 2012 at 16:01
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Specify "Shrink To Fit" or Similar

Many of the printing services I have used have an option called "Shrink to Fit" or something like that. When selected, this will print the image so that it all fits on the paper. This may leave empty bands of white along the sides or top and bottom of the print, which you can trim off later.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ What printing services do you use that offer the "shrink to fit"? Thanks. [email protected] Jeanette Fletcher \$\endgroup\$ Feb 7, 2018 at 18:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JeanetteFletcher if you live in the UK then the machines in Boots and Tesco Extra all have a shrink to fit option. Just takes a little while to find it sometimes! \$\endgroup\$
    – MiguelH
    Feb 8, 2018 at 9:13
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By default most printers that print the standard 4x6 print size will center crop if your images are not proportion to the print size. It makes your photo fill the full print and the rest, either top and bottom or left and right side, gets cut off. The kiosk should of shown you cropping marks once you selected the size - usually when you do them individually it should show you. If you selected a batch process and said print one 4x6 of each then it might not show you how it will print.

All newer digital cameras have a 2:3 ratio option. Smart phones ratios are very wide and you will always have image cropping. With older digital cameras the standard size was 4x5.4 prints and some places offered 4.5x6 to get the full image on print.

If you free cropped when you edited you will run into these cropping issues. You should never overwrite your original image when editing. If you did there no way to go back and get the part you cropped out.

Doing a shrink to fit (usually called full frame or no crop) will fit your image on a 4x6, but you will have white strips on the two sides that fall short.

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