Help for Newbie

[slugger1]

Hello all, this is my first post and I am a newbie to digital photography. For starters, I have a 20d with a 28-135 lense. I love the camera and really like digital. I've taken a lot of shots in the last few days after receiving my camera. I've loaded the images into my computer to start working with post processing with the adobe photoshop software that came with my camera. When I go to crop a particular image, I cannot get the image cropped to a 8X10 image because I have zoomed in too much when taking the shot. How do I go about insuring that I can obtain the print size that I need prior to taking the shot? Do I just not zoom in at all then crop to the size during post processing?

Like I said, I'm new to digital and the whole post processing game so any help with this is appreciated. Any online websites would be appreciated too.

Thanks,

[WsW-WYATT-EARP]

instead of cropping to 8x10 crop to a ratio of 4:5 ... see if that helps ... then make your image size 8x10 after cropping to the ratio

[masdog]

Hi Slugger. Welcome to PR. Let me understand what you're asking.

Are you saying that you zoomed in too much when you shot the image and you can't crop to 8x10, or are you saying that you can't crop the image because you used the zoom in tool and zoomed in too far?

[masdog]

instead of cropping to 8x10 crop to a ratio of 4:5 ... see if that helps ... then make your image size 8x10 after cropping to the ratio

Hey Ben. Would you be so kind as to post an article on how to crop to a ratio? I only know how to crop to specific pixel sizes and to specific image sizes.

[milhouse]

If your saying you missed some of the shot because you zoomed in too close when you shot the photo then you just need to work on framing with the camera.

If your saying you cant figure out how to resize in Photoshop CS and CS2 then here’s what you do.

1. Open image
2. Select Rectangle Marquee Tool (top left tool in tool bar)
3. Once that is selected look just below the top menu and you should see a drag down selector named “Style”. Select “Fixed Aspect Ratio”
4. Just to the right put 8 for width and 10 for height
5. Select the area you want using the selected Marquee tool (it should keep ratio)
6. Once your happy with area selected, go to top manu and go to ‘Image’ then crop.
7. Now your image is cropped correctly and you need to set it to the correct size for printing. Go to top menue “image” then “size”.
8. With the size window open check these check boxes – Scale Stlyes and Scale Proportions and uncheck Resample Image.
9. Set width to 8 inches and height should default to 11.

Hope that helps!

[slugger1]

Thanks all for the replys. Let me explain what I did. I know how to use the crop tool in PP to get the size I need. What I did is I actually zoomed in too much when taking the shot and now can't get all the details of the shot in a 8X10. Just wondering what is the best way to avoid this in the future. Do I just need to practice with the camera or is there another way to do this?

Thanks

[WsW-WYATT-EARP]

then it sounds like you just need to resize the image to 8x10 ...

[masdog]

Slugger, I'd get more practice framing your images.

[Medley]

Hi Slugger,

If I understand what you're saying, the solution is to look in the menus of your camera, find the one that controls digital zoom, and turn it off. Using only the optical zoom retains the maximum image resolution, and the digital zoom can be applied with the Photoshop software- with greater precision.

Hey Ben. Would you be so kind as to post an article on how to crop to a ratio? I only know how to crop to specific pixel sizes and to specific image sizes.

1) Switch to the marquee selection tool (m).
2)Find the "style" setting in the top menu bar and select "fixed aspect ratio" from the drop-down menu. Apply the desired settings to the width and height boxes in the menu bar.
3) Make the desired selection.
4) Copy the selection to the clipboard (Edit>Copy)
5) Create a new document (File>New). In the dialog box, ensure that the "preset" setting is set to "clipboard" (it should be). Click OK. This creates a document with the same dimensions as your selection.
6) Paste the selection into the new document (Edit>Paste). This will put the contents of the clipboard on a new layer in the document.
7) Flatten (merge) the image, if desired.

-Joe U.

[slugger1]

I don't know about this menu option. Is this one of the custom functions for the 20D? Please explain.

Thanks