Dear Guests,

Recently some guests have expressed dissatisfaction with their prints because the company they use to print their photos is cropping off part of the top and part of the bottom.  This can lead to heads being chopped off which is no fun for anyone.  So I want to help you prevent this from happening.  Its important to remember that when you take your pictures that they aren’t taken in the dimensions 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 or any of those standard printing sizes.  Therefore, the printer has two options: a) either distort the picture into these dimensions so that the picture fits or      b) arbitrarily crop the photo for you into these dimensions.  Thus, it is necessary to crop the photos into the dimensions you want for printing so that you can choose which part is kept and which part is cropped out.

Here is a demonstration of what normally happens to your photos:

Original photo looked like this:

When I sent the picture to print in 4x6, it would subsequently print like this:

Notice how my head would be chopped off.  Therefore, I need to crop this photo into the proportions 4x6 first.  To do this in the Windows Live Photo Gallery, open the picture and then click on Fix to get your tools.  After choosing Crop Photo, you will see a highlighted portion and a shaded portion.  The shaded portion will be discarded once you click apply.  First, its necessary to choose the proportion you want to print from the drop down box (in this case 4x6).

Now you will want to stretch the highlighted portion to fit the part of the picture you want to keep.  Hover the mouse directly on top of one of the boxes in the corner and you will see two arrows pointing diagonally.  Then, hold down the left click and either expand or detract that highlighted portion.  Notice you can only stretch diagonally because the photo needs to retain 4x6 proportions.  No matter how small or large the highlighted portion is, it will print perfectly in the proportions 4x6.

Notice that before I click apply, the highlighted portion lines up like this:

That is generally what the printer does to your photos; it chops off part of the top and part of the bottom.  But you can avoid that by moving the highlighted portion up the page.  Hover the mouse on top of the highlighted portion so that you see four arrows pointing north, east, south and west.   Then hold down the left click and move the highlighted frame around.  Click apply to finalize.  Now your photo will print in the right proportions.

You need to make sure you do this every time you send your photos off to be printed in order to avoid chopped off heads and to make sure the part that prints is the part you want.

Your Techspert on the ms Zuiderdam of the Holland America Line Digital Workshop powered by Windows,

Brent Benner