Often professional print houses will have specific requirements for submitting files to print so here’s a rundown on a good way to prepare a file for print. In this case I had an 8×12 (dimension) image that I wanted to crop to print as an 8×10 inch, 300 ppi print.
I was lucky with this image that the cropping wasn’t a problem with cutting off vital information. Years of shooting for print has helped me shoot with some generous space around the subject just in case. Open the image in Photoshop and use the Crop tool. Once you’ve clicked on the crop tool then you can set your size and resolution on the top bar.
I like to set my crop tool with the crop guide overlay /Rule of Thirds. (cs5 and above only) Click and drag your crop tool from one side of the image to the other and then you can slide your guide up and down to where you’re happiest with the crop being. If you hold down the Shift button at the same time you will have more control. Double click on the image to crop and it will crop to whatever dimensions and resolution you set in the top bar.
To make sure your image is now exactly what you need check it in Image/Image Size and then save.
Once you have prepared your image for print don’t forget to click Clear in the top bar of the crop tool.
I have seen several of your tutorials which are great and I have seen your cropping techniques. How do you set your crop tool to crop guide overlay? May be a stupid question but I cannot figure it out?
Once you have dragged the crop tool across the image you should see on the top bar Crop Guide Overlay. Beside that there is a little drop down menu and Rule Of Thirds is one of the options.
This is so helpful, thank you so much!
Do you always use 300 ppi no matter what size you want it?