Image Size

[Nebbia0808]

Hello, I am making an exhibition catalogue with photographic images. In my layout I have landscape images and portrait. In my design all my landscape frames are a fixed width / height and the same for the portrait images. This is to make the layout consistent with the design of the catalogue. However. when I fit the images in the frame there is always a tiny amount of cropping and the artists are not happy. I do "fit image proportional to the frame" the size of the frame is such that the disturbace to the image is minimal but I cant get away with it at all.

I am at a loss on how to keep the frame sizes but not crop the images . If i were to not crop the images, there wpould be some dicrepencies in the frame sizes throughout the design. 

Can anyone help me with this ? 

[Mike Witherell]

Both you and the Photoshop image producers would have to agree in advance to make photos at a certain ratio of height to width. If you have a set size, communicate that to the Photoshop people. It can be either a ratio or a set pixel count and resolution.

[Nebbia0808]

Dear Mike thank you for kindly taking the time to answer. the artists have given me their images and sizes. It is up to me to design a layout with the frame sizes that will be good for the design. I have two artists's work hence they do not shoot in the same manner and yes there is some compromise. It is ever so slight that I am not sure why the cropping is even an issue but in one image part of a sign is cropped. I can rearrange the image inside the frame to show the sign but another part of the image may suffer although again very little... I am glad to hear that I am on the right track however and that there is not one fits all options for images in a book . design and layout it is a compromise 

[Peter Spier]

It seems doubtful that all images will be at a consisten aspect ration, so you cannot expect to make them all conform to a fixed frame size. You can either crop images and make the artists unhappy, or you can do what I would in this situation and fit images propartionally, leaving some white space around images that are not in the same ratio as your frames.

The other option is to allow the frames to vary.

[Nebbia0808]

Thank you for your feedback. I am glad to hear there is no perfect solution for this problem. In this case the images are cropped slightly around the edges and not all of them. This barely affects the image and is hardly noticeable in fact. But I deal with a tricky artist. I am resisting making each frame slightly different in size to not crop the images because it will look messy even if it is not by much. With the white space option that would be the same / the sizes would be different but I understand where you are coming from. Thank you very much and I feel better . 

[Peter Spier]

I used to do some museum exhibition catalogues. If you want to see the entire image, and youwant a consistent "hole"  in which to put the image, you pretty much are stuck floating the image in the hole.

[Nebbia0808]

Yes that makes perfect sense and of course you are right