By Dan Bouchard

Sizing, scaling and cropping is an issue that comes up just about every day in the reprographics business. I cannot tell you how many times I have had a customer come in with a flash drive full of photos, wanting a personalized calendar printed, and they can’t understand why their vertical pictures won’t fill a horizontal page without cropping.

Then we have the customer who wants a 24 x 36 drawing reduced to “half size” 18 x 24 but doesn’t understand why it is not “half scale”.

The most important thing to remember is that when you reduce or enlarge a digital image, or any image for that matter, the percentage of change is accomplished in both the vertical and horizontal directions. Therefore, reducing a 24 x 36 architectural drawing by 50% will result in the 36 inches becoming 18 inches and the 24 inches becoming 12 inches, or a 12 x 18, NOT an 18 x 24. So, half size is not the same as 50%. If you are enlarging an 8 ½ x 11 photo by 200% you end up with a 17 x 22, not an 11 x 17. This is confusing to a lot of people. Isn’t 200% double the size? Don’t two 8 ½ by 11s make an 11 x 17? Again, 200% doubles the size in BOTH directions.

Most of the issues stem from simple terminology.  What most people consider “half size” is different than what will result from 50%. To avoid confusion, you should always predetermine the percentage of the enlargement or reduction that you require.

Sometimes, your desired effect can be achieved by cropping. Cropping can help you limit the amount of your reduction therefore maintaining the details in your image. Conversely, cropping an image you are enlarging will require a larger percentage of enlargement which may result in a lower resolution and a more pixilated image.

Your reprographer can help you with both scaling and cropping. For maximum results, bring them your unedited images at the highest resolution you can. Your 72 dpi image from your Social Media page just isn’t going to look good enlarged into a poster no matter what miracles your reprographer performs.

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