Digital Photo Album help

[Rainman Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rainman]

Just wondering if someone could give me a few tips on how to set up a digital photo album? I purchased a 7 inch screen one and have a couple of hundred photos on a card. Most seem to work OK but there are a few that dont fit the screen. The box says it displays 4:3 and 16:9 images what does that mean in laymans terms? How do I ensure photos will fit the screen the first time around, I have resized the originals using Image Resizer Powertoy in Windows.

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Re: Digital Photo Album help

4:3 and 16:9 are aspect ratios. There is also another common aspect ratio and that is 3:2.

4:3 is the aspect ratio of older style CRT TVs and computer monitors. It is also commonly used for point and shoot digital cameras
16:9 is the aspect ratio of modern plasma and LCD TVs. Now also becoming common on comoputer monitors. They initially came out as 16:10 aspect ratio
3:2 is the aspect ratio used most commonly by DSLR cameras

When you say that some photos don't fit the screen, do you mean that parts of the picture fall off the screen?
Do you know what aspect ratio the photos were taken in? A model of the camera used would help determine this, although if it was the Panasonic LX3, you can choose between 1:1, 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 aspect ratios.

Also if you took portrait orientation, the digital photo frame might cut the top and bottom off.
In the menu, there should be some options to fill the frame, fit the frame, or stretch the photo to the frame.

Fit the frame is what you want. As you mentioned that you had a choice of aspect ratios, I find this quite odd. The screen of the frame itself should have a native aspect ratio.

Perhaps you can show us exactly the menu options, then you might get some better pointers.

[Rainman Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rainman]

Re: Digital Photo Album help

Thanks for the reply Amts, I was aware of aspect ratio in relation to TVs but wasnt aware it was also used in digital photography - but it makes sense. The album was bought for my mother (now wished I got one with a larger screen ) and unfortunately most of the images are scanned copies of old photos so selecting the aspect ratio isnt really an option. I guess I could fiddle with the dimensions of the image when scanning but it seems that its a bit of hit and miss in some instances. Two images around the same size can result in one being oversized and the other fitting perfectly. The scanner is around 9 years old so I guess thats not helping either.

[HGMonaro Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close HGMonaro]

Re: Digital Photo Album help

I bought one of these for my mum a few years ago and I eventualy decided it was best to resize the photos to the native resolution of the screen. In my case it was some weird non std resolution. What I do is resize each image in Photoshop by setting the background colour to black and the resize attributes to the screen resolution. I then drag the 'marching ants' crop box to where ever I want it. Sometimes that means going outside the image area (eg. if the image is vertical, then I make it horizontal by dragging the resizing edges out until the vertical dimension covers the image area). When I hit 'enter' to perform the resize, it fills the background with black which suits being displayed on the LCD best IMO. As the screen is pretty small, I reckon you want to maximise the picture area so most pictures could benefit from cropping, and this 'workflow' will allow you to do that. Once you save the pictures (new file name or new folder so you don't overwrite you originals) it also means you get more on the card/USB. Just depends on what you want to achieve!

oops, forgot to add, whatever you do, remember you need to resize/crop proportionly so you don't stretch or squash images

[mav Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close mav]

Re: Digital Photo Album help

Just download this free software from VSO to quickly resize your images for photo frames - VSO IMAGE RESIZER