Digital Focus: Scale Pictures for Framing

Feature: Scaling and Printing Pictures for Framing

Ever tried to bang a square peg into a round hole? Not a problem, as long as the peg is smaller than the hole. Printing digital images is pretty much the same story. You can make a print that's more or less 8 by 10 inches, but when it comes to framing the little guy, you often have to print it a bit too small--and claim you meant it to look that way--or print it too big and cut it down to size by hand with a paper cutter. There has to be a better way.

Thankfully, there is now. The newest version of Paint Shop Pro makes it easy to crop images to a specific size. This long-overdue feature is ideal for mounting or framing your prints--all image editors should adopt it. Don't have Paint Shop Pro 8? Later in this article I'll show how to do the same thing with an inexpensive image utility.

Of course, if printing a picture at a specific size like 5-by-7 or 8-by-10 isn't important to you, just click your image editor's Print button and get it over with. But if you want to print your image so it fits properly in a traditional picture frame, let me show you how it works.

Scaling in Paint Shop Pro 8

Suppose we want to make a print that fits perfectly in an 8-by-10-inch frame. Start by opening Paint Shop Pro and loading the picture you want to print. We want to crop it down so it will print at the right proportion to fit in the frame. To do that, we'll use Paint Shop Pro's new and improved Crop tool. Click the Crop icon (it's the third one down in the toolbar on the left side of the screen), then click on one corner of the image and drag the cursor to the opposite corner. The cropping box will expand to encompass the image, creating a rough crop. At this point, it's not important to be even remotely accurate; just make a crop box anywhere in the picture, with any dimensions.

Now look at the Tool Options Palette at the top of the screen. (Unfortunately, this toolbar isn't labeled; it runs the width of the application window near the top and displays the width and height of the image in pixels, centimeters, or inches.) If it's not open, choose View, Palettes, Tool Options from the menu.

Set the Units menu to inches and change the Width and Height dimensions to 8 by 10 for portrait orientation or 10 by 8 for a landscape orientation. If your image's resolution is on the low side and Paint Shop Pro won't let you enter 8 and 10 inches for the Width and Height, then enter two other numbers that maintain the correct proportions--like 4 and 5 inches or even 2 and 2.5 inches, if necessary. Then click the Maintain Aspect Ratio box, which allows us to resize the crop box without changing the aspect ratio.

So far, so good. Now you can use your mouse to move the crop box around the image to pick the perfect composition. You can grab the crop box by a corner to stretch or shrink it--the proportions will stay primed for an 8 by 10 inch frame.

When you're happy with the result, click the check mark in the Tool Options palette to make the crop, and you'll get an image that's proportioned exactly right for an 8-by-10-inch print. From here, choose File, Print and look for the Size and Position section of the Print dialog box. Set the width to your desired print size--like 8 inches--and press the Tab key. The height will automatically snap to the right size (10 inches), since we already set the print aspect ratio with the Crop tool. Your image is now ready. Click the Print button and wait for the paper to come chugging out of the printer. Trim away the unprinted part of the paper with scissors or a paper cutter, and you have a print that's sized for your frame.

Scaling with a Smaller Image

Well, I hear what you're saying: "Dave, I don't have Paint Shop Pro 8. How can I make perfectly proportioned images for framing without it?"

I suggest that you try a cool little program from Trivista called A Smaller Image (available for a mere $15). I've mentioned it before, and it remains a great way to crop pictures--especially ones destined for frames. Load the image and set the Width and Height in the output section (at the top right of the program window) to the proper proportion for your frame. For an 8 by 10-inch print, for instance, enter 800 and 1000 pixels. Then drag the crop box around to perfect your composition and use the Original Image slider to change the crop size. When you're done, click the Apply button in the upper right-hand corner and save your image. Then load the file into your image editor and print it.