Should I be angry at Snapfish?

[muchnika]

I use Snapfish for on-line printing of basic family photos. I chose Snapfish because it is inexpensive and easy to use.

I placed a large order for 4x6 photos with Snapfish last week. Before ordering the photos, I carefully cropped all the photos to the EXACT aspect ratio of a 4x6 print (using Adobe tools) so that their printer would not need to modify the pictures. When the pictures arrived in the mail, ALL of the photos were cropped on all 4 sides. Approximately 1/8" was cropped off of each side.

Should I be angry at Snapfish? Is this "normal" (meaning, do all photo printers crop the edges regardless of the aspect ratio)?

Alina

 

[RayN]

They all will do this. In order to print right to the edge of
a print the print is scaled up a bit. This way the image is exposed over
the edge of the paper just a little. This is done to compensate for
slight variations in the paper path as the paper roll or sheet moves
through the printer. If it is not done then you can get
"edging" (white lines) along the edge.

You should still crop to a 4x6 aspect ratio but just leave a little
extra image in the edge region.

If you need to see all the pixels then you might have to add a
border that is a bit larger then what they over bleed.

I use Snapfish for on-line printing of basic family photos. I
chose Snapfish because it is inexpensive and easy to use.

I placed a large order for 4x6 photos with Snapfish last week.
Before ordering the photos, I carefully cropped all the photos to
the EXACT aspect ratio of a 4x6 print (using Adobe tools) so that
their printer would not need to modify the pictures. When the
pictures arrived in the mail, ALL of the photos were cropped on all
4 sides. Approximately 1/8" was cropped off of each side.

Should I be angry at Snapfish? Is this "normal" (meaning, do all
photo printers crop the edges regardless of the aspect ratio)?

Alina

 

[Michael Meissner]

I use Snapfish for on-line printing of basic family photos. I
chose Snapfish because it is inexpensive and easy to use.

I placed a large order for 4x6 photos with Snapfish last week.
Before ordering the photos, I carefully cropped all the photos to
the EXACT aspect ratio of a 4x6 print (using Adobe tools) so that
their printer would not need to modify the pictures. When the
pictures arrived in the mail, ALL of the photos were cropped on all
4 sides. Approximately 1/8" was cropped off of each side.

Should I be angry at Snapfish? Is this "normal" (meaning, do all
photo printers crop the edges regardless of the aspect ratio)?

I've seen it in many of the printers I've used, including my HP inkjets though different printers crop differently. As I understand it, the problem is in order to do borderless prints they actually have to expand the picture slightly to. When I print pictures to go in mattes, I put two borders around the pictures -- a white border where the matt will go and a 2 pixel black border around the white border, and I don't rcall ever seeing the black border being printed. I use two borders in case some 'smart' software sees the border and deletes part of it.

 

[Tricia]

I use Snapfish for on-line printing of basic family photos. I
chose Snapfish because it is inexpensive and easy to use.

I placed a large order for 4x6 photos with Snapfish last week.
Before ordering the photos, I carefully cropped all the photos to
the EXACT aspect ratio of a 4x6 print (using Adobe tools) so that
their printer would not need to modify the pictures. When the
pictures arrived in the mail, ALL of the photos were cropped on all
4 sides. Approximately 1/8" was cropped off of each side.

Should I be angry at Snapfish? Is this "normal" (meaning, do all
photo printers crop the edges regardless of the aspect ratio)?

It's part of the borderless process, so if the paper is crooked in the machine there won't be any white borders. Inkjet printers do the same thing, although it's adjustable on some.

If you're cropping from all four sides before you upload, you can just crop a little oversized. Otherwise, about all you can do is to put a border on your photos before you upload them; you can use black or another color instead of white, if you prefer. Using the Adobe programs, I would first crop to 4x6, then use Image> Canvas Size (Image> Resize> Canvas Size in Elements) to add the needed amount.

--
Tricia

 

[muchnika]

Thanks. Snapfish has a 110% money back guarantee for any prints that you are not happy with "for any reason". I am going to ask for a refund, then recrop everything a bit larger and then have them all reprinted.

Alina