Trying to understand sizing and resizing

[grammom]

I've been reading the forum. I thought I understood that if I wanted the best quality print I would need a resolution of 300 and I would need to resize my photo to the size I was planning on ordering. Well, I wanted to try Shutterfly while we still can take advantage of the special 20% off. I uploaded all my photos that I had sized and noticed that quite a bit seems to be cut off in the previews. What am I not understanding? Thanks, Su

[Brio]

Sounds like an issue with the aspect ratio of your image.
What are the pixel dimensions of your original image, and what size do you wish to print?

[grammom]

Okay, first of all--thank you so much for your help. When I upload a picture from my camera it's always W-2832 pixels, H-2128 pixels, W-12.313, H-9.252, res. 230. I uped the resolution to 300 (read that was best) and cropped my picture to W-10, H-8 and now it's W-3000, H-2400 pixels. If you can understand what I did wrong, I would greatly appreciate it.

[grammom]

Figured out my problem--wasn't looking at the "print preview." I know--what a blonde moment! :p :o
I still would like to understand the resolution thing. I read 300 is best, but then I read it's really too much for an 8x10. What really is best? Thanks! :)

[TonyW]

IMHO what's best is don't change it from the way it came out of your camera. When you crop leave the resolution box blank and Elements will resize using just the pixels that came from your camera.

The only time I change resolution is when I'm emailing or posting a picture to the web when you need to reduce the number of pixels so they'll fit on a screen.

Tony

[grammom]

Thanks, Tony. That's what I had always done. Guess I was just trying too hard without really understanding what it does to a photo when you start changing too much.