Printing 4:3 output?

If they really can't print without cropping and you really can't switch to a different printer then what you do is make a white rectangle in Photoshop and embed you image inside the rectangle. The printer will see a file that is exactly the format of his paper and you will get white borders. Use a grey or black col id you don't like white borders.

The printer I used last time cropped my prints even though I wrote "do not crop" in the instructions. They re-printed them for me when I pointed out the mistake. Those automatted machine CAN be set not to crop

 

I want to rant about how stupid sizes of frames are. The size I can get from my actual printer would be fine for me, but the closest size I can get in a picture frame is 8x10. I have to loose so much horizontal detail to make that work. I hate it

 

I print with handles (white space) on either side of a 4x6. Generally, on 8.5x11, I lose a little bit of the scene but not much. On bigger sizes, I have handles again.

In Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, you can select "Fit to Page" and it will quickly and easily calculate it so that you don't lose anything. You can go from there to choose what's acceptable loss. If you're thinking about it when you shoot, you can make sure you have enough dead space to crop appropriately.

 

At our shop, customers are given a choice of cropped or un-cropped for their "4x6" images. With the 4:3 format, that means a 4x5 print.