"Wally" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:24:40 +1300, Eric Stevens
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 08:53:34 -0700, Wally wrote:

On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:35:55 +1300, Eric Stevens
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:27:40 -0700, Wally wrote:

I have a couple hundred JPG files of different aspect ratios. Hardly
any two are alike in dimension. Mostly they are approx 4:5, but that
is rough. They were just cropped over the years for best display on
the screen.

Now I want to make prints of them, and the prints need to be 4x6 inch
because that is the standard and cheapest, and will fit into the most
common albums.

The places that print JPGs allow me to crop the pics to fit 4x6, but
in most cases that will crop picture area that I don't want to lose.
Instead I would like the whole file printed, leaving white margins (or
some other color) on either side. But those places won't allow me to
do that.

I can go into software and edit the pic to do this, leaving nice gray
margins on either side. But it's not practical to do a couple hundred
like this.

Irfanview supports batch jobs, and allows setting the canvas size to a
desired size in pixels. But that won't work for me, because the
original files don't have consistent dimensions.

Paint Shop Pro seems to be similar - I can set the required dimensions
in pixels or in length units, but that won't work if the origs have
many different sizes.

Paint Shop Pro will do what you want and let you print to either a
printer or a file.

How?

Here is a scan of a 6" x 4" test print I happened to have lying
around. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31088803/Image1.jpg I presume that
this is the sort of thing you want. The length of the panoramic image
has been fitted to the paper and the top and bottom has been padded
with white space.

If the image was taller than it was wide then the top and bottom of
the image would be fitted to the paper and it would be the sides that
were padded.

OK, it looks good. Will have to give it a try. But I gotta admit that
JS PhotoPrep sounds exactly right and real simple too.

I agree, and at $15 US it's a lot cheaper than PR Genuine Fractals. I
thought it seems what you are looking for.