# Exporting for print question/problem



## Ben shillabeer (Aug 12, 2017)

Hey folks...

I recently took a photo in to get printed at 16x20 but the printer said they'd have to crop it and that's not cool.

I exported it at 16x20 but at the printers it said it was 14x20...I'm confused. 

Can anybody give me clarity or advice when it comes to exporting for print?

I use a canon t3i...does a crop sensor camera effect how large I can export? Thank you..

B


----------



## DGStinner (Aug 12, 2017)

Natively, your camera creates images that have a ratio of 2:3 so prints that maintain that ratio (4x6, 8x12, 14x21) would not require cropping.  A 16x20 print has a ratio of 4:5, so some cropping is needed.


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Aug 12, 2017)

Like Dave said, the file you send to be printed must have the same aspect ratio as the paper you are printing it on. If not, the print won't fill the paper. So either you or the printer will need to crop the photo to the right ratio of height to width (or you can trim the physical print to cut off the white portion). It's easy to crop to a specific aspect ratio. You can set it to anything you want in the crop tool. The hard part, perhaps, is deciding what part of the image to leave out.


----------



## Ben shillabeer (Aug 12, 2017)

Thanks for the feedback guys  Much appreciated!


----------



## Bernard (Aug 16, 2017)

Hal P Anderson said:


> Like Dave said, the file you send to be printed must have the same aspect ratio as the paper you are printing it on. If not, the print won't fill the paper. So either you or the printer will need to crop the photo to the right ratio of height to width (or you can trim the physical print to cut off the white portion). It's easy to crop to a specific aspect ratio. You can set it to anything you want in the crop tool. The hard part, perhaps, is deciding what part of the image to leave out.



That's true if you print the image without borders.
You could also choose not to crop the image and have some (unequal) white borders around. I am assuming the print shop can do that if you ask them ....


----------



## Ben shillabeer (Aug 16, 2017)

Thanks  

I'm pretty new to Lightroom so I was doing custom cropping as opposed to an aspect ratio crop.

I was also shooting in 16:9 but I changed my camera setting to 3:2.

I think I got it figured 

B


----------



## Bernard (Aug 16, 2017)

Ben shillabeer said:


> Thanks
> 
> I'm pretty new to Lightroom so I was doing custom cropping as opposed to an aspect ratio crop.
> 
> ...


Your camera setting is one thing, 16:9 or 3:2, I guess 3:2 is somehow better because 16:9 probably means already cropping inside the camera.
I think an image really exists on paper, not on a screen, and the ratio of your printed image can be different and should be choosen for artistic reasons only. 
You should not be constrained to a few standard ratios !  Your way of doing custom cropping was IMO perfectly OK.


----------

