I am going to set up a site to sell pictures. Can someone provide insight on the best cropping strategy that would allow people to order prints in the most popular sizes? I assume one doesn't want to crop too tight to allow flexibility in printing sizes but is there an optimum crop size I should be using?
I am also open to recommendations on sites to use, I would like to pick one that has reasonable fixed costs, yet with great usability, features, support and of course customer friendly. No idea of volume that I would do.
Spend a little time looking at the poplular sizes and the height-to-width ratios of those size. It is not about how tight you crop, but the ratio of the crop you make.
I agree with John. When looking for a service, I needed to find one that allowed me to crop / correct photos after the customer's order, but before printing. (I do low volume of sales on a high volume of photos.)
Currently, I use Photoreflect service (18% commission on sales), though I've heard Smugmug now allows photographers to upload revised images before prints. I'm sure there are others.
Andrew R wrote:
I've heard Smugmug now allows photographers to upload revised images before prints.
They do. You set a "print delay" which allows you time to do the cropping yourself if desired. BTW, their commission is 15%.
The common print sizes vary in aspect ratio between 4x6 (1:1.5) and 8x10 (1:1.25).
One choice is to crop 5x7 (1:1.4) which is in between the two aspect ratios. However, I have found that a 1:1.35 crop, while not exactly corresponding to a print size, is closer to the center of the 1:1.5 and 1:1.25 crops. That is to say if you crop the photo to a 1:1.35 aspect ratio you will have to remove about the same amount from either the top and bottom or both sides to get to the 4x6 or 8x10 print.
Sometimes, when a shot looks perfectly framed in the original 4x6, I'll leave it uncropped and let the customer decide whether to cut off the feet for a 8x10, print a 8x12 or print an 8x10 with a white area on both sides (no crop).
I use smugmug but I hate to go back and recrop a photo.
How do you guys handle the sharpening for print orders that are handled automatically by the web site like printroom, zenfolio etc? Customer can order from 4x6 to say 16x20.
I think a good strategy would be to show in normal/captured aspect ratio, then crop to order.
I do a capture sharpen on all images when I first import them into Lightroom for editing, very very light maybe level 20 at a radius setting of about .6, detail at 0 and masking at 0, and a very light smart sharpen about 40-60% when finished editing. I do not apply any print sharpening to the images until I get a print order (on the prints I do myself.) Some of the online sites will also sharpen the images when you upload, but I leave that function off.
