# 2:3 Aspect ratios to fit Canvas perfectly without cropping



## Oxize (Apr 20, 2014)

I made some photograph from my Aunt a while ago, but i want to let it print on Canvas for her birthday. I mostly use Profotonet.nl which is an online printshop here in the Netherlands.

I can select several sizes shown from the pictures below.







Which sizes are fitting my 2:3 landscape portrait perfectly without cropping (30x45?)?






All these aspect ratio's giving me headache how to interpret these how they come out live. Isnt there any cheat sheet out there how i can check what an 30x30 (1:1), 30x40, 30x45, 30x60, 30x70, 30x80, 40x50, 40x60 looks like?

I think i want to buy an Canvas with  size around 30/40 cm's (30x45) on the smallest side.

I hope you can clear up some things or make my life easier with all these aspect ratio's. I am using Creative Cloud with PS en LR. My monitor is calibrated with an X-rite Colormunkie Display. An testphoto from the same printshop, compared to my proof are almost exactly the same. Should i move my watermark also more inside or leave it where it is?


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## clee01l (Apr 20, 2014)

Welcome to the forum. 
If you divide 3 by 2 you get 1.5 So, a 3:2 aspect ratio can also be expressed as 1.5  by dividing the larger number by the smaller. Similarly, you can take 30X40 (40:30) and it yields 1.33.  And on down the list until you get to 30X45(45:30) which yields 1.5) Further down the list is 40X60 which also resolves to 1.5.
I would leave the water mark where it is in this photo. Although, aesthetically, I think the portrait would be better balanced if there were not so much dead space to the right of the subject. Typically live subjects should not be looking beyond the edge of the frame since it draws the viewers eye out of the photo too.  Compositionally, it would have been much better for the extra space to have been on the subject's left in this pose.  If you are unable to do that, then cropping the image to balance the space available on the left with a similar space on the right would result in portrait a more pleasing to the eye.


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## JimHess43 (Apr 20, 2014)

Using Lightroom, you can create virtual copies of your image and then crop each one of them differently using different aspect ratios. Then you can compare all of the virtual copies to determine which one you like best. Seems to me that is a pretty good "cheat sheet". Your camera shoots in a 2:3 aspect ratio. And, depending on the size you want to order, it will require you to crop some of the image. There's no way to make a 2:3 image fit into a 4:5 aspect ratio without cropping unless you want to intentionally distort the image. I recently ordered a 16 x 20" print from my daughter's wedding. The image was taken in the landscape orientation, and it was necessary to crop it significantly to get the portrait-oriented photo that I wanted. You would expect the quality to have diminished quite a bit because I was only using about 50% of the original image. Surprisingly, it turned out very well.

Cropping is something that you need to be willing to do sometimes in order to make the picture fit what you're trying to produce.


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## Oxize (Apr 20, 2014)

clee01l said:


> Welcome to the forum.
> If you divide 3 by 2 you get 1.5 So, a 3:2 aspect ratio can also be expressed as 1.5  by dividing the larger number by the smaller. Similarly, you can take 30X40 (40:30) and it yields 1.33.  And on down the list until you get to 30X45(45:30) which yields 1.5) Further down the list is 40X60 which also resolves to 1.5.
> I would leave the water mark where it is in this photo. Although, aesthetically, I think the portrait would be better balanced if there were not so much dead space to the right of the subject. Typically live subjects should not be looking beyond the edge of the frame since it draws the viewers eye out of the photo too.  Compositionally, it would have been much better for the extra space to have been on the subject's left in this pose.  If you are unable to do that, then cropping the image to balance the space available on the left with a similar space on the right would result in portrait a more pleasing to the eye.



Thanks! Nice to be here.

Ah, thats a good tip by dividing those. And yes, i do crop my photo's but not dead on, on aspect ratio's. For portrait in this case 4x5 or 1x1 would be better, yes. For printing such portraits with watermark, is important to have them dead on a aspect ratio because otherwise the printshop crops your photo's?






@Jimhess: I tried it out as above. In survey mode i select those and compare them to eachother. I like Lightroom already verry much, but now much more. So much to learn!


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