Cropping/Printing Problem

[mb571]

I am having a problem that has been irritating me for awhile and hope there is someone out there who can shed some light on it.

Before sending my digital images to the printer (London Drugs) I crop them to match the aspect ratio of the print size.

When using certain softwares for cropping, the picture come back with a black band along the bottom of the print where the portion was cropped off.
http://www3.telus.net/mb571/tbird/tbird.html

This happens when I crop with PhotoImpact7, or ACDSee4, but not when I use PaintshopPro7, or ACDSee 3.1.

The printer is a Fuji Frontier 390. I am wondering if the printer is reading the jpeg coding wrong or if the girls who operate it have a setting wrong.
Any ideas anyone??

Mark

 

[MagicAngel]

No, I don't think so. I think it is more likely that the image size simply isn't the correct size for the print and the printer is fitting the image left to right leaving a blank at the bottom. Are you sure that the print is actually 4x6 and so is the picture?

Do you get a choice of crop or fit? If so, select crop. If your image is the correct size, you get no cropping. If it is too big, it will get cropped down to the correct size instead of getting a band at the bottom, top or side.

Another thing you might check is that the black band might ACTUALLY be on the image. Pull a cropped image into photoshop (from PI7 or ACD4) and see. You never know, maybe you aren't actually cropping.

You don't actually need to crop you photos to the correct size, in fact, an arguement might be made for leaving them much larger than you need and letting the software on the printer do the reduction.

Finally, can you post the image that this came from?

I am having a problem that has been irritating me for awhile and
hope there is someone out there who can shed some light on it.
Before sending my digital images to the printer (London Drugs) I
crop them to match the aspect ratio of the print size.
When using certain softwares for cropping, the picture come back
with a black band along the bottom of the print where the portion
was cropped off.
http://www3.telus.net/mb571/tbird/tbird.html
This happens when I crop with PhotoImpact7, or ACDSee4, but not
when I use PaintshopPro7, or ACDSee 3.1.
The printer is a Fuji Frontier 390. I am wondering if the printer
is reading the jpeg coding wrong or if the girls who operate it
have a setting wrong.
Any ideas anyone??

Mark

 

[mb571]

No, I don't think so. I think it is more likely that the image
size simply isn't the correct size for the print and the printer is
fitting the image left to right leaving a blank at the bottom. Are
you sure that the print is actually 4x6 and so is the picture?

Wrong. The image size is correct, that I am sure. My G2 shoots

2272x1704. For a 4 x 6 I crop to 2272 x 1515. This matches the aspect ratio of a 4x6 print.

Do you get a choice of crop or fit? If so, select crop. If your
image is the correct size, you get no cropping. If it is too big,
it will get cropped down to the correct size instead of getting a
band at the bottom, top or side.

I use the crop tool. As above, I know all about aspect ratio's of different print sizes.

Another thing you might check is that the black band might ACTUALLY
be on the image. Pull a cropped image into photoshop (from PI7 or
ACD4) and see. You never know, maybe you aren't actually cropping.

When viewing the image with any of five softwares I use, the 2272 x 1515 image looks perfect. On the computer in the store it looks perfect. But when the send it to the Fuji printer, its monitor shows the black band.

You don't actually need to crop you photos to the correct size, in
fact, an arguement might be made for leaving them much larger than
you need and letting the software on the printer do the reduction.

I disagree 100%. I tend to tighly frame when snapping my photos. When I first got them professionally printed, I was getting unwanted cropping. The photo was printed cropping off the top of my son's head from the forehead up. To avoid unwanted cropping I can crop from the bottom. A digital image has an aspect ratio of 1.333:1 while a 4 x 6 has an aspect ratio

(ratio of length to height) of 1.5:1 . A printer has no way of telling where the most desireable cropping should be. And I don't believe the claim that the person running the machine looks at every photo.

Finally, can you post the image that this came from?

I will post the full image as a link to this page. You will notice that the image properties are 2271 x 1520 which is 1.5:1 give or take 5 pixels.

Thanks for your interest,
Mark

I am having a problem that has been irritating me for awhile and
hope there is someone out there who can shed some light on it.
Before sending my digital images to the printer (London Drugs) I
crop them to match the aspect ratio of the print size.
When using certain softwares for cropping, the picture come back
with a black band along the bottom of the print where the portion
was cropped off.
http://www3.telus.net/mb571/tbird/tbird.html
This happens when I crop with PhotoImpact7, or ACDSee4, but not
when I use PaintshopPro7, or ACDSee 3.1.
The printer is a Fuji Frontier 390. I am wondering if the printer
is reading the jpeg coding wrong or if the girls who operate it
have a setting wrong.
Any ideas anyone??

Mark

 

[etown]

Hi Mark

I can't really offer any help, but I have had a similar issue with LD that might jog someone else's memory.

A while ago (~ a month) I was trying to do some comparisons between my S800 and local photo labs. Since LD had a half-price sale on 8x10s it seemed like a great place to start. I had an image that I had cropped and saved as a .tif (and a .jpg as backup), and for some reason they both showed up in their uncropped entirety when I was looking in the LD software!

Thinking I was barely above monkeys in the evolutionary process, I returned home to get the correct images for a second try. When I got home, I checked the ones from my CF card and they looked great. I tried the .jpg in every application I had that would open it and it always looked like the cropped version! Still not entirely beliving what I'd seen, I redid all of my changes to the original photo and tried another London Drugs. Same result. At this point I was too tired to waste any more time on it and just left it alone.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences and what they have learned... Do other labs have the same problems? Is there anything that we can do to correct this?

FWIW G2, PS 6-- -Mike Sunley

 

[Freeman]

Mark,

I, too, have started to use a local store that has a Fuji Frontier (370) for printing digital files. I tell the employees not to make any corrections or adjustments to my files so that I can just use their machine as a neutral device. I have not encountered the problem you're having, but I would suggest talking to Fuji directly. Try to get to the highest level of tech support that you can. Maybe they will have an answer for you. Have you tried having different print sizes made at the same place, like a 5x7?

 

[mb571]

I had an 8 x 10 done that I cropped to match the aspect ratio of that piece of paper (1.25:1) and it turned out fine. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the problem does not occur with every editing software. I was cropping just dandy with ACDSee 3.1 and getting back great photos. Then I upgraded to ACDSee 4 and surprise, there's that black band again.

I was trying to contact Fuji as the girls at the store are clueless, but I couldn't find an e-mail address and couldn't get through on the phone. I may have to try harder. Thanks for your input.

Mark

Mark,

I, too, have started to use a local store that has a Fuji Frontier
(370) for printing digital files. I tell the employees not to make
any corrections or adjustments to my files so that I can just use
their machine as a neutral device. I have not encountered the
problem you're having, but I would suggest talking to Fuji
directly. Try to get to the highest level of tech support that you
can. Maybe they will have an answer for you. Have you tried
having different print sizes made at the same place, like a 5x7?

 

[Tricia]

Looking at your photos, it's obvious that they have cropped the amount of the black space at the bottom from the top of the photo (easily seen if you look at the branches on the trees). As to why, I haven't the foggiest idea, although I suppose it's possible that they set it for automatic cropping for consumer digital cameras (most pro cameras do shoot at 3:2 rather than 4:3 ratio) and didn't notice that the photo was already cropped to the correct size.

Tricia

 

[mb571]

Thanks for your interest Tricia. I don't believe the machine set to automatic cropping is the answer. As I have said in previous posts, the problem only occurs when I crop with Photo Impact7 and ACDSee 4 and not when I cropped with Paintshop Pro or ACDSee 3.1

I am more inclined to think it is how the Fuji printer reads the jpeg encoding. I did an experiment where I cropped the same photo 3 times with different softwares and sent them out for printing at the same time. They came back with 1 out of 3 showing this problem.

Mark

Looking at your photos, it's obvious that they have cropped the
amount of the black space at the bottom from the top of the photo
(easily seen if you look at the branches on the trees). As to why,
I haven't the foggiest idea, although I suppose it's possible that
they set it for automatic cropping for consumer digital cameras
(most pro cameras do shoot at 3:2 rather than 4:3 ratio) and
didn't notice that the photo was already cropped to the correct
size.

Tricia

 

[mb571]

I finally found where to send an email to Fuji. We'll see if they get back to me on the subject.

Mark

Mark,

I, too, have started to use a local store that has a Fuji Frontier
(370) for printing digital files. I tell the employees not to make
any corrections or adjustments to my files so that I can just use
their machine as a neutral device. I have not encountered the
problem you're having, but I would suggest talking to Fuji
directly. Try to get to the highest level of tech support that you
can. Maybe they will have an answer for you. Have you tried
having different print sizes made at the same place, like a 5x7?

 

[MagicAngel]

No, I don't think so. I think it is more likely that the image
size simply isn't the correct size for the print and the printer is
fitting the image left to right leaving a blank at the bottom. Are
you sure that the print is actually 4x6 and so is the picture?

Wrong. The image size is correct, that I am sure. My G2 shoots
2272x1704. For a 4 x 6 I crop to 2272 x 1515. This matches the
aspect ratio of a 4x6 print.

Please read what I wrote. Is the 4x6 print actually a 4x6 print? Did you measure it?

 

[mb571]

That print measures exactly 4 x6 inches, as does all the photos I had developed with it that didn't exibit the problem. I don't know how the machine cuts the paper or if it does. I would like to learn more about the machine. Sorry about being abrupt, it's just out of frustration. I have covered almost every possible angle for the past month. I even took the same photo, cropped it with three different softwares, then had them developed. Only one of the three were exhibiting the fault. I thought, "Fair enough then, I will not use PhotoImpact 7 to crop." Then after I upgraded to ACDSee4 to get raw support for Canon files, the problem reared its ugly head again. I'm afraid if the problem isn't correctly identified, it will keep coming back as we try new softwares.

Mark

No, I don't think so. I think it is more likely that the image
size simply isn't the correct size for the print and the printer is
fitting the image left to right leaving a blank at the bottom. Are
you sure that the print is actually 4x6 and so is the picture?

Wrong. The image size is correct, that I am sure. My G2 shoots
2272x1704. For a 4 x 6 I crop to 2272 x 1515. This matches the
aspect ratio of a 4x6 print.

Please read what I wrote. Is the 4x6 print actually a 4x6 print?
Did you measure it?

 

[MagicAngel]

I can only add one more thing. If you are using a format like TIFF or PSD and you "save as" a JPG if there is a transparent section of the image, it will become a line that is the same color as the current background color. Remember that JPGs don't have transparent properties.

In Photoshop, if you do a crop and you drag the crop out of the frame, it will fill in the area with the background color. I had that problem on one of my prints. I added an area to the print by mistake.

Hopefully, you will find a solution to your problem.

Mark

No, I don't think so. I think it is more likely that the image
size simply isn't the correct size for the print and the printer is
fitting the image left to right leaving a blank at the bottom. Are
you sure that the print is actually 4x6 and so is the picture?

Wrong. The image size is correct, that I am sure. My G2 shoots
2272x1704. For a 4 x 6 I crop to 2272 x 1515. This matches the
aspect ratio of a 4x6 print.

Please read what I wrote. Is the 4x6 print actually a 4x6 print?
Did you measure it?

 

[mb571]

I am shooting at the highest res, lowest compression jpeg right out of the camera.
Mark

In Photoshop, if you do a crop and you drag the crop out of the
frame, it will fill in the area with the background color. I had
that problem on one of my prints. I added an area to the print by
mistake.

Hopefully, you will find a solution to your problem.

Mark

No, I don't think so. I think it is more likely that the image
size simply isn't the correct size for the print and the printer is
fitting the image left to right leaving a blank at the bottom. Are
you sure that the print is actually 4x6 and so is the picture?

Wrong. The image size is correct, that I am sure. My G2 shoots
2272x1704. For a 4 x 6 I crop to 2272 x 1515. This matches the
aspect ratio of a 4x6 print.

Please read what I wrote. Is the 4x6 print actually a 4x6 print?
Did you measure it?

 

[mb571]

It would certainly drive you wacky eh Mike. If it looks great on the monitor, how could you ever tell it won't print properly. Stick around and I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of this.

Mark

Hi Mark

I can't really offer any help, but I have had a similar issue with
LD that might jog someone else's memory.

A while ago (~ a month) I was trying to do some comparisons between
my S800 and local photo labs. Since LD had a half-price sale on
8x10s it seemed like a great place to start. I had an image that I
had cropped and saved as a .tif (and a .jpg as backup), and for
some reason they both showed up in their uncropped entirety when I
was looking in the LD software!

Thinking I was barely above monkeys in the evolutionary process, I
returned home to get the correct images for a second try. When I
got home, I checked the ones from my CF card and they looked great.
I tried the .jpg in every application I had that would open it and
it always looked like the cropped version! Still not entirely
beliving what I'd seen, I redid all of my changes to the original
photo and tried another London Drugs. Same result. At this point
I was too tired to waste any more time on it and just left it alone.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences and
what they have learned... Do other labs have the same problems?
Is there anything that we can do to correct this?

FWIW G2, PS 6
--
-Mike Sunley

 

[mb571]

Hi Mike. Today I spoke to a guy from Fuji who was zero help. He told me to go to a different London drugs store to see if the pic turned out differently. Big help eh!

Mark

Hi Mark

I can't really offer any help, but I have had a similar issue with
LD that might jog someone else's memory.

A while ago (~ a month) I was trying to do some comparisons between
my S800 and local photo labs. Since LD had a half-price sale on
8x10s it seemed like a great place to start. I had an image that I
had cropped and saved as a .tif (and a .jpg as backup), and for
some reason they both showed up in their uncropped entirety when I
was looking in the LD software!

Thinking I was barely above monkeys in the evolutionary process, I
returned home to get the correct images for a second try. When I
got home, I checked the ones from my CF card and they looked great.
I tried the .jpg in every application I had that would open it and
it always looked like the cropped version! Still not entirely
beliving what I'd seen, I redid all of my changes to the original
photo and tried another London Drugs. Same result. At this point
I was too tired to waste any more time on it and just left it alone.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences and
what they have learned... Do other labs have the same problems?
Is there anything that we can do to correct this?

FWIW G2, PS 6
--
-Mike Sunley

 

[MagicAngel]

Hi Mike. Today I spoke to a guy from Fuji who was zero help. He
told me to go to a different London drugs store to see if the pic
turned out differently. Big help eh!

So, read between the lines. Operator error, maybe? Do as he suggests. If the problem doesn't happen, it is the equipment, if it does, it is you.

 

[mb571]

I don't know if you have read all the info in this thread carefully or not so I'll try to explain it again just for you.

• Cropped the same photo, with three different image editing softwares, using exactly the steps with each. (I mean exactly, and it's not a difficult process, cropping off 200 pixels)
• Took the three cropped photos to photo finisher on cd
• Two of the three photos were perfect, one had a black band across the bottom.

Could you please explain to me your logic in coming to a conclusion of operator error??
Operator error could only be on the printer's operator!

Mark

Hi Mike. Today I spoke to a guy from Fuji who was zero help. He
told me to go to a different London drugs store to see if the pic
turned out differently. Big help eh!

So, read between the lines. Operator error, maybe? Do as he
suggests. If the problem doesn't happen, it is the equipment, if
it does, it is you.

 

[etown]

For the record, I tried 2 different London Drugs and had the same problem at each... The Fuji guy just gave you the standard 'P.O.' response, otherwise known as the 'I don't know and don't care about your problem' response.

One day I may try another service, but I just can't build up the enthusiasm right now. Maybe if I need somthing bigger than 7.99 x 10... Q-Image/S800 printed out just fine with either a .jpg or .tif

I can't help but think that it's software related... if the image was truely and properly cropped, their would be nothing in the image to print besides the cropped portion.

Maybe the answer will come in a dream

Hi Mike. Today I spoke to a guy from Fuji who was zero help. He
told me to go to a different London drugs store to see if the pic
turned out differently. Big help eh!

Mark

-- -Mike Sunley

 

[mb571]

Once again I agree with you Mike and appreciate your input. I think it can only be the software used and how it is read by the printer. I am totally surprised that this problem is so unheard of. I think that is because the people at LD's say that all the people they've served just bring in untouched photos on the cf card. Wait until people start finding their creative side, there's bound to be mass problems.

I emailed the photo to a Fuji lab operator (who came recomended) at Kerrisdale cameras in Vancouver yesterday, and here was her response:

"Hello Mark,

I made a copy from your photo that you sent to me. I save into Compart Flash then made a copy from my digital image unit. I also found a back line in my monitor from our digital image. However, when I looked under photoshop, I can not find any black line at the bottom of your photo. I transfered from photoshop to my digital image and it looked fine. I am sending a copy of that print which you can pick up from our Victoria Branch next Tuesday "

fong

One day I may try another service, but I just can't build up the
enthusiasm right now. Maybe if I need somthing bigger than 7.99 x
10... Q-Image/S800 printed out just fine with either a .jpg or .tif

I can't help but think that it's software related... if the image
was truely and properly cropped, their would be nothing in the
image to print besides the cropped portion.

Maybe the answer will come in a dream

Hi Mike. Today I spoke to a guy from Fuji who was zero help. He
told me to go to a different London drugs store to see if the pic
turned out differently. Big help eh!

Mark

--
-Mike Sunley

 

[mb571]

I may have an answer for this problem folks. I will be conducting an experiment in the next couple days to confirm my belief. I think that the metadata or "exif" is confusing the fuji printer. Certain softwares delete the exif data after editing while others preserve it. Those that preserve it, still show the pixel count as what the camera shot even after the image has been cropped.

Mark

I am having a problem that has been irritating me for awhile and
hope there is someone out there who can shed some light on it.
Before sending my digital images to the printer (London Drugs) I
crop them to match the aspect ratio of the print size.
When using certain softwares for cropping, the picture come back
with a black band along the bottom of the print where the portion
was cropped off.
http://www3.telus.net/mb571/tbird/tbird.html
This happens when I crop with PhotoImpact7, or ACDSee4, but not
when I use PaintshopPro7, or ACDSee 3.1.
The printer is a Fuji Frontier 390. I am wondering if the printer
is reading the jpeg coding wrong or if the girls who operate it
have a setting wrong.
Any ideas anyone??

Mark