Wedding Anniversary Portrait

[Mark321]

This image will be enlarged to 24in x 36in for my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary. I edited this image in Xara (instead of Lightroom) and I think it looks better than if I did it in Lightroom (my opinion)!

Hope you enjoy!

Mark

[gwpriester]

Nice. My brother and his wife just celebrated their 50th.

[Mark321]

Nice. My brother and his wife just celebrated their 50th.

In the year 2020 I will be celebrating 50 years in magic. That's a long time.

And in 2024 I will be celebrating 50 years in photography too.

[Mark321]

And by the way...

This portrait, they have no idea about it, totally a surprise (which I can hardly wait for them to see it in July, which is when their Anniversary is). I'm gonna get a frame that's pretty but it won't be gold. It'll be black but I will buy some copper color spray paint (not gold color; it's too brassy in color). Copper color looks more like 24kt gold and spray paint it.

[Mark321]

It took forever but I finished editing this image. I added a slight vignette and I worked more on the eyes of both and I added a glint of light on the eyeglasses and on the ring. Thought I'd show you what the final image will look like:

[stygg2003]

Nicely done Mark, your parents will be pleased with your finished image.

Stygg

[Mark321]

Nicely done Mark, your parents will be pleased with your finished image.

Stygg

Thanks, Stygg

This is the BEFORE & AFTER Editing in Xara. See what Xara is capable of!!!

[stygg2003]

I see you made good use of your gold text fill and how to make a glint (starburst).

Stygg

[Mark321]

Well...
I've gone and printed the 24in x 36in print at Office Depot. It's usually $24.99 but I had a coupon that gave me 30% off so that was great. But what blew me away was not the print itself as much as the UNSOLICITED compliments that I got from total strangers while in the store. One elderly gentleman said, "Really beautiful". And a young woman said to me, "How lovely. Your parents will be proud." So, all in all, it was a good morning.

Mark

P.S...Something happened though, while I was at the store. When I went to have it printed, the young man helping me, told me that the image was not 24in x 36in, which is exact the dimensions that I made the document at. Instead, he said it was way bigger than that. So he scaled it down to a 24 x 36in document for me before printing. Fortunately, the aspect ratio was fine. What I can't figure out is HOW it got bigger. And I need to know how to find out the exact dimensions of my original document (in inches only). HOW do I convert the dimensions from metric centimeters to English inches? Anybody know?

[mwenz]

Options dialog will allow the units to be changed. As well, if there is a bleed amount then that too can affect the export size to PDF (and there is an option in the PDF dialog to include bleed or not).

But also be aware that the people working at OD and FedEx Office can be somewhat dim-witted when it comes to using both their own software and Acrobat. I use a FedEx Office where they are pretty smart, educated in both software packages. But once in a while a newer person doesn't really understand how to set Acrobat to print at 100% and so I walk them through it.

If you didn't give them a PDF but instead gave them an image to print, then likely it is the export dialog for the image that was left at a lower resolution versus the pixel dimensions used.