THE LITTLE PRINT STUDIO / FIELD NOTES

Print a photo on A4 without cropping

A4 paper measures 210 × 297 mm. Its proportions differ from a typical 4:3 phone photo or 3:2 camera image. To keep the entire photo, choose Fit with borders in the calculator and check the printer’s scaling settings.

How many pixels does A4 need?

Convert millimeters to inches by dividing by 25.4, then multiply by your target PPI. At 300 PPI, full A4 measures approximately 2480.31 × 3507.87 pixels. Rounding each dimension upward to meet the target gives 2481 × 3508 pixels. The commonly quoted 2480 × 3508 size is practically equivalent for most print jobs.

Example: a 4032 × 3024 photo

Turn A4 horizontally to 297 × 210 mm. Using Fit, a 4:3 photo occupies 280 × 210 mm, leaving 8.5 mm of border on the left and right. The image resolution is about 365.8 PPI. Using Fill instead produces about 344.8 PPI and crops roughly 5.7% of the image area.

Check the print dialog

Choose the correct paper, orientation and scaling. Borderless printing may enlarge and trim the image. For predictable borders, use the printable area as a custom size in the calculator and follow your printer’s specifications. Run a small test before printing multiple copies.