I am a painter. I took a photo of a painting and noticed that the aspect ratio looked a little off.

[jwt99]

The aspect ratio looked slightly wider in the horizontal and shorter in the vertical aspect.  I turned the painting horizontal and took a photo and it looked correct but when I rotated it to upright in digital photo pro it returned to the slightly wider and shorter than reality aspect ratio.  Any help would be appreciated. I am using a EOS 40D camera.

[jwt99]

In digital photo pro you set the pixels and the shows stipulate that they want 300/inch for copying purposes.  The problem is that the camera is now giving me images of 20X 16 paintings and 24 X 16 paintings of people that have the same ratio apparrently and the 16 X 20 and 16 X 24 both are looking like the people are much shorter and wider than the original paintings portray them.

[jwt99]

My tall thin wife looks short and wide in the image the camera is taking of her 16 X 24 painting.  That is a serious issue.

[TTMartin]

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@jwt99 wrote:

In digital photo pro you set the pixels and the shows stipulate that they want 300/inch for copying purposes.  The problem is that the camera is now giving me images of 20X 16 paintings and 24 X 16 paintings of people that have the same ratio apparrently and the 16 X 20 and 16 X 24 both are looking like the people are much shorter and wider than the original paintings portray them.

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You only have 3888 x 2592 pixels. Any thing you set higher in DPP it is just interpolating to make it larger. It's not really giving it more resolution.

[jwt99]

I would love to find out that this is a problem with the software or that I somehow have changed a setting that caused this result.  But it is showing a difference in the video screen of the camera before it ever gets to the computer so I suspect it is something in the camera.  Although it is much harder to see accurately in the camera viewfinder than on the computer flatscreen

[TTMartin]

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@jwt99 wrote:

I would love to find out that this is a problem with the software or that I somehow have changed a setting that caused this result.  But it is showing a difference in the viewfinder of the camera before it ever gets to the computer so I suspect it is something in the camera.  Although it is much harder to see accurately in the camera viewfinder than on the computer flatscreen

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When you look through the viewfinder, you are looking through the lens. Any distortion in proportions would have to be originating with the lens, and even that is pretty unlikely.

[jwt99]

I am speaking of the screen that  is on the back of the camera where you can pull up the photo you have just taken. I can see that is it off on that small screen but I can really see the error when I look at it in digial image pro

[TTMartin]

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@jwt99 wrote:

I am speaking of the screen that  is on the back of the camera where you can pull up the photo you have just taken. I can see that is it off on that small screen but I can really see the error when I look at it in digial image pro

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It is very unlikely it is a camera issue. 

It may be a computer issue (wrong resolution set in your computer for the computer monitor). 

Or a user issue using DPP. First you can only increase the resolution when you are exporting the photo in DPP, you can not do it in the trimming tool. Second be sure you have 'Lock Aspect Ratio' checked when exporting the photo, otherwise it could cause the issue you are describing.

[jwt99]

I suspect that this is most likely a camera sensor issue.  When a camera makes an image appear wider and shorter than it looks in real life is a problem with the camera in my opinion.

[jwt99]

I have been using this camera with the same software for over 5 years without any difficulties.  It seems unlikely that it would suddenly have such a strange error when it has never had an error like this before.  I use RAW files and experiment with changing images and altering sizes and layering in PS without any problems like this one in years.  I have had many difficulties using Photoshop because it is a difficult program to master but DigitalPhotoPro has been user friendly and, while I have had a few problems over the years with batch process, I have never had it change the look of an images proportions.  I have never had a 16X24 inch painting come out with the same aspect ratio as a 16 X20 painting.  Or is it possible that there is a problem with semantics.  I don't especially know for certain that I am using the term aspect ratio properly.  I mean I have never had a 16 X 24 inch painting look like it had the shorter wider proportion of a 16 X 20 inch painting when I took a photo of it.  I have never had the figures in a photo look shorter and wider than they do in a painting.  I will now take some photos of people with measurements and see if the camera is misrepresenting them.  Thanks for all your input.  I really do appreciate being able to get some ideas about what is going on.

[RobertTheFat]

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@jwt99 wrote:

I have been using this camera with the same software for over 5 years without any difficulties.  It seems unlikely that it would suddenly have such a strange error when it has never had an error like this before.  I use RAW files and experiment with changing images and altering sizes and layering in PS without any problems like this one in years.  I have had many difficulties using Photoshop because it is a difficult program to master but DigitalPhotoPro has been user friendly and, while I have had a few problems over the years with batch process, I have never had it change the look of an images proportions.  I have never had a 16X24 inch painting come out with the same aspect ratio as a 16 X20 painting.  Or is it possible that there is a problem with semantics.  I don't especially know for certain that I am using the term aspect ratio properly.  I mean I have never had a 16 X 24 inch painting look like it had the shorter wider proportion of a 16 X 20 inch painting when I took a photo of it.  I have never had the figures in a photo look shorter and wider than they do in a painting.  I will now take some photos of people with measurements and see if the camera is misrepresenting them.  Thanks for all your input.  I really do appreciate being able to get some ideas about what is going on.

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The aspect ratio of a (rectangular) image is the ratio of the length of its long edge to that of its short edge. It is usually expressed as a relatively prime numerator and denominator or as a dimensionless constant. Thus the aspect ratio of images produced by most DSLRs is 3:2 (or 3/2 or 1.5).

This isn't the time or place for a lesson in photo editing, but one possibility occurs to me: If you're trying to use the length and width setting in DPP's RAW-to-JPEG converter as a form of cropping, that is the source of your problem. Setting those values manually will, by default, distort the image if it results in a change to the aspect ratio. If you want to crop the picture (without changing its aspect ratio), use the cropping tool. And set the RAW converter to maintain, not change, the aspect ratio. (There's a check box for it.)