With wedding season finally slowing down for us, I’ve been wanting to share a little cropping guide for all our couple getting ready to print images for their homes. Something like this seems simple to us photographers but it’s a question we get asked a lot. How do you choose a photo for printing? What’s the best crop for a canvas? Here’s a little cheat sheet you can save for future reference.

First, most cameras are going to shoot in a 4 x 6 format, so with some sizes you don’t need to crop at all for prints. It’s when you get into the 5 x 7’s, 11 x 14’s and other popular frame sizes that you need to make decisions. The best images for printing large are those with lots of extra negative space (empty parts of the frame with no subjects). This way when you crop you won’t be cutting out any people. Wide shots are also great for printing larger canvases because you don’t want any people to end up being larger then life size.

I hope this is helpful! To see some samples of the images we chose to print for our home, check this post out.