I have taken a break from challenges, as my Pandemic Porch Portraits project is keeping me very busy. Instead of an entry this week I would like to pose a question which relates to Patti’s theme “The Crop “.
Some of the families that I am photographing will be printing a photo from their shoot. I use with a micro 4/3 camera, and read that the best aspect ratio is 2×3/4×6. Should I be cropping to this ratio before exporting from Lightroom and should I constrain the image to this size? I’m often happier with the crop if I don’t constrain it, but will the family lose too much later if they want to make a print? I’m hoping that someone with printing experience will be able to enlighten me.
The first photo is cropped without those restraints and the second is cropped to 2×3/4×6 and constrained to image. I have not edited other than the crops. The photos submitted to the families are further edited.
Unconstrained
Constrained
Musin' With Susan 
It all depends on how many pixels are in your photo. I usually zoom out a little bit, so I can freely crop later. If you bought your camera in the last 5 years or so, you can crop pretty deep and still get fairly good resolution, especially for photograph size photos. It also depends on your post processing software, sometimes you can crop by saying how many pixels both vertical and horizontal.
Another hint is always take photos on the highest resolution, it allows for more cropping.
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Cee, I’m not sure that answers my question about whether it is best practice for me to crop to a certain size and constrain the image in the event that the customer wants to print later without having to crop further and lose part of the shot.
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I am not an expert on this…hopefully someone can give you the answers you need. Anyway – lovely shot!
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