File to CD to Wal-Mart Help

I have seen all the talk about wal-mart printing so I want to give it a shot.

Once I edit the photos and happy with them, is there anything special I need to do when I burn them on a cd? I have seen some talk about various DPI settings. I generally shoot the largest size with my G2. Do I need to change the size if I want a 4X6 print or will they turn out fine?

Thanks in advance....

I just picked up my first prints from Walmart. 2 things, if you can put the pictures on compact flash, do that. Much nicer. I took my CF card in and they were able to take the pictures from that.

Also, if you have photoshop, use the crop tool or selection tool to give you a 6x4 (widthxheight) box to crop within (use the 6x4 ratio, not necessarily shrink the picture down to a 6x4). Otherwise, the Frontier system will take off about a 1/2 inch from the top and bottom, and if you are not expecting this, it is not always a welcome crop.

evets1001 said:

I have seen all the talk about wal-mart printing so I want to give
it a shot.

Once I edit the photos and happy with them, is there anything
special I need to do when I burn them on a cd? I have seen some
talk about various DPI settings. I generally shoot the largest size
with my G2. Do I need to change the size if I want a 4X6 print or
will they turn out fine?

Thanks in advance....

Click to expand...

TeamSpeed's right,

You can (and should) shoot your highest resolution, but keep in mind the aspect ratio.

TeamSpeed said:

Also, if you have photoshop, use the crop tool or selection tool to
give you a 6x4 (widthxheight) box to crop within (use the 6x4
ratio, not necessarily shrink the picture down to a 6x4).
Otherwise, the Frontier system will take off about a 1/2 inch from
the top and bottom, and if you are not expecting this, it is not
always a welcome crop.

evets1001 said:

I have seen all the talk about wal-mart printing so I want to give
it a shot.

Once I edit the photos and happy with them, is there anything
special I need to do when I burn them on a cd? I have seen some
talk about various DPI settings. I generally shoot the largest size
with my G2. Do I need to change the size if I want a 4X6 print or
will they turn out fine?

Thanks in advance....

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

evets1001 said:

I have seen all the talk about wal-mart printing so I want to give
it a shot.

Once I edit the photos and happy with them, is there anything
special I need to do when I burn them on a cd? I have seen some
talk about various DPI settings.

Click to expand...

If your Wal-Mart uses a Frontier, you will get the best results by resizing your files to the Frontier's native resolution of 300 dpi. The Frontier has two printing modes. The first shrinks your image slightly and adds random sized borders. A pro lab may have the image centered, but Wal-Mart almost certainly will not. The look is generally ugly.

The second printing mode, and the one Wal-Marts usually uses, is to crop your image somewhat. The Frontier manual contains wonderfully exact numbers of pixels that will be cropped. Unfortunately for us, no real-wordl Frontier seems to pay attention to the manual. Also, every Frontier crops differently. A starting point for 4x6 images is to add 30 pixels to the width (6" dimension) and 14 to the height of a 4x6. In other words, expand the canvas in Photoshop (Image> Canvas Size) to 1214x1830. This should get you close.

The other approach, which is the one I usually use, is to assume that anything within about 20 pixels of the edge may be cropped out and just not worry about it As long as your image has quiet edges (the mantra of the first photo editor I worked for), you will have no problems.

If you want good color to go along with your prints, I recommend getting an Icc profile for your Wal-Mart's Frontier. We will make one for you at no charge. You can download a 4x6 target and instructions from http://www.drycreekphoto.com/

-Ethan

what i did was edit my pics in psp 7 then used fotocrop (free download) to size them to 6x4. easy. then stored them in an edit folder as tif. then copied the edited photo folder to a cd and took the cd to wal-mart and they printed them. i cropped some by i/4 ie 4x mag. but still cropped the magnified photo in fotocrop to 6x4 so i knew what would be printed. some i think were 8x in a 6x4 and they got a bit blurry edges. the reason to crop to obviously is so i would control the crop not walmart. and the plan actually worked. with the cost of cd at 10c not very expensive. jan

BTW dpi is a printer setting so no worry. and using fotocrop you can forget all that math stuff about how many pixels you need per inch. just keep them all as many as you can. and that is the advantage to using large and superfine in your camera setiing. jan
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G2, qimage, psp7, need instruction