The camera you choose and the printer you choose almost lock you into certain design elements.

Most point-and-shoot cameras like the Canon Power Shots have an aspect ratio – the relationship of photo height to width – of 4:3. That means the photographs are 1.33 times as wide as they are high when you are taking a horizontal (landscape) photograph.

Most DSLR cameras (the ones with removable lenses) have an aspect ratio of 1.5:1. That means the photographs are 1.5 times as wide as they are high when you are taking a horizontal (landscape) photograph. You could also express this as 2:3

If you want each photograph to be 2 inches wide – the most popular width for a photo booth strip – a P&S camera will make an image 1.5 inches tall. Four images stacked on top of each other, with no space between them, would be 6 inches tall. That would make an image 2” wide and 6” tall, the most popular strip size for a photo booth. There would be no space between them and no room to add artistic elements, and you would have absolutely the largest size for the faces of the subject possible.

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Two variations of the design: the 4-up version uses 2:3 aspect ratio images, the 3-up uses 4:3 aspect ratio

Using a DSLR camera (or any other camera with a 1.5:1 aspect ratio) for the same exercise each photo would be 1.33 inches tall and 2 inches wide. Stacked four high, your images would total 2” x 5.33” – leaving .67” of white space on a 2” x 6” photo strip.

If you use only 3 images, with a maximum width of 2” per image, the 4:3 aspect ratio of a point and shoot camera will leave you 1.5” for your graphics at top, bottom and between shots.

3 images taken with a DSLR camera will leave you 2” for graphics.

Usually you’ll end up making your individual shots narrower than the full width of the paper, which means they’ll also be shorter from top to bottom. More room for graphics.

Cameras with the 4:3 aspect ratio give you a little taller image space, which can be handy when you’ve got short guests standing on tip-toe to get their heads in the photo.

Most commercial templates are designed for photos taken with the 1.5:1 aspect ratio, and if you use a Power Shot you’ll lose a little from the top and bottom of each photo. That can lead to guest complaints.

The most recent version of Breeze Systems’ PSRemote software offers a handy new option. You can select DSLR emulation and the software will automatically crop your individual pics to the 1.5:1 aspect ratio. It will also mask the live preview on your computer monitor so your guests won’t see areas that won’t make it into the final print.

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How you set software to crop point and shoot images to the same aspect ratio as DSLRs

So you can safely buy Cherie’s templates, for example, and know that you won’t need to redesign them.

Most of the templates in the site’s marketplace actually come as sets of templates: 1 for 3-photo 2x6s, 1 for 4-photo 2x6s, and one for 4×6″ prints. The 3-up versions have openings for images in the 4:3 aspect ratio while the 4-up versions have openings for images in the 1:1.5 aspect ratio.

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