The Great Digital Print Dilemma

I decided it was time to start printing some of my pictures. So I went to Canal Walk and gave Kodak and Photo Connection the same 15 photos to print as a test. The results were rather surprising. The prints from Kodak were really dark, something which is probably fixable. The pictures from Photo Connection, in stark contrast, were crisp and bright so it was not difficult to pick the winner.

One thing that I did however notice was that there was a serious amount of cropping and resizing going on. Kodak had cropped the top and bottom and Photo Connection had resized them to fit leaving large white borders on the sides. Both of these options did not really thrill me and what thrilled me even less was the thought of having to go and crop/resize all my pictures manually for an optimal fit.

So I went digging to find out what the deal was. The “standard” print size nowadays is jumbo which is 15 x 10cm. If you divide 10 into 15 you get a ratio of 1.5. So I then took the dimensions of my digital images which, at its largest, is: 2816 x 2112. When divided it gives you a ratio of 1.3333. “Aha!” I thought, “this explains it all, but how does one solve this?”. So I started looking at simply changing the dimensions of my pictures to fit, but that looked terrible. I then started looking around for a bulk cropping tool, but I was not very enthusiastic about it. I then happened to notice on the Kodak envelope there was an additional size option listed: 18 x 13cm. This gave me a ratio of 1.3846 which was almost perfect. I then called Photo Connection to find out if they could print this size, I was informed they did not, but there was a digital print size called 6DSC which is 15 x 11.25cm and when I crunched the numbers it worked out to a ratio of 1.3333. Horaay!

So it was off to Photo Connection with about 500 pictures. The following day I received a call to find out if I was sure I wanted all the pictures printed (I did). After all they had a special on and at R1.39 a print it was a great deal. Oh no, that only applied to the Jumbo size, this was going to set me back R2.90 a print (for a mere 1.25cm extra). I did however manage to talk them down to R2.40 a print. So I went ahead with the order. I was not disappointed. They did an excellent job, and while it cost me a lot it was worth it not having to look at cats with missing ears and people with no foreheads. I also bought photo albums specially for the size which set me back R100 each, but can take 300 photos.

So photography is working out to be an expensive, but enjoyable hobby.

Something else that Leon showed me is the ability to compile your own photo book. You can download free software from My Photo Book to compile your book, then hand in a CD at any participating store and they produce a bound book with the cover of your choice. Pretty nifty!