What photo printer prints 5X7 pictures?

When developing prints at 4x6 or 5x7 or 8x10, is it important that the photo be resized appropriately ?

• what I mean is that digital cameras use an aspect ratio of 4:3 or whatever. when you print pictures which are 4x6 or 5x7, will the print be cropped appropriately or is it possible part of the photo will be cut off. I hope my question is straight forward, i'm a bit confused. and how do you resize the photo without losing quality? Thanks.

• Answer:

  Digital cameras come in two main aspect ratios, 2:3 and 3:4. Hence, a 4 x 6" print is full frame in the 2:3 aspect ratio, but you'll lose part of the photo if the original file was shot in the 3:4 ratio. The 3:4 ratio is used on classic TV sets, which is why you see it on digital cameras. It maybe good for displays, but it's lousy for all common print sizes. Full frame for a 3:4 ratio is a 6" x 8" print--which is only available at some printers. Thus when printing, you pretty much have three options: 1) let the printer crop the edges automatically. 2) asking the printer to do full frame, leaving a border like a letterboxed TV image along two edges. 3) cropping the image yourself before you send it to the printer (this is the best choice if the subjects aren't centered). To do 3) above, you need to edit your image in an editing program like Adobe Photoshop, using a crop tool to get an image in the right orientation and ratio. Then, you need to save it in the highest quality setting. You won't lose quality that way. See this basic tutorial, which explains the Photoshop Crop tool: http://artist.tizag.com/photoshopTutorial/croptool.php Hope this helps!