When you upload artwork to Printumo, you are asked to crop it before it can be printed. This step makes sure your artwork fits the print size you or your customer chooses.

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An aspect ratio is the relationship between the width and height of an image. For example, a 1:1 aspect ratio is a perfect square, while a 3:2 aspect ratio is a rectangle where the width is 1.5 times the height.

Different print sizes share the same aspect ratio. A 12×8 inch print and a 30×20 inch print are both 3:2. One is just larger than the other. This means that once you crop your artwork to a 3:2 ratio, it fits all 3:2 sizes perfectly.

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Your uploaded artwork might not match every print size we offer. Without cropping, we would have to either:

By cropping your artwork yourself, you stay in control. You decide exactly which part of the image is shown in the final print.

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Printumo offers two main product types (canvas prints and fine art paper prints), and each comes with its own set of available aspect ratios and sizes.

Canvas has 7 aspect ratios to choose from:

Fine art paper currently supports fewer aspect ratios, including:

Canvas offers more aspect ratios because it supports wider panoramic formats (like 16:9 and 2:1) that are popular for landscape photography and wide artwork.

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On fine art paper, each crop screen saves its own crop for its own shape. When a print is ordered, we always use the crop that matches the size that was ordered. The screens run from the shape closest to your file to the one furthest from it, so the last screen usually looks the most cropped. It does not replace the earlier crops.

If your file already has one of our shapes, for example a 2:3 painting, leave the 2:3 crop box over the whole picture. Go through the remaining screens, then tick only the 2:3 sizes (8×12″ and 24×36″). Those prints show your full artwork.

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The size list only shows sizes that have the same shape as your file. Sizes of another shape never appear on that product, even though they are on our website and we print them.

For example, a canvas made from a 5:4 file offers sizes up to 150×120 cm. It never offers 165×90 cm (64×36″), because that size is 16:9, a much wider shape.

To sell a size of another shape:

The file needs to be close to the new shape, because Printumo always picks the shape nearest to your file. Uploading a new file to an existing product keeps that product's original shape, so start a new product instead.

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Some sellers build a white margin into the artwork itself, so the motif sits inside a border. Printumo keeps one artwork file per product, and every size on that product is made from that one file. There is no way to attach a second file for a second size.

That is fine as long as the sizes share the same shape. The whole picture, border included, is scaled to the size that was ordered, so the border keeps the same proportion. A 6.4 cm border on a 100×140 cm print becomes a 3.2 cm border on a 50×70 cm print. It is the same design at half the scale.

It is a problem when a size has a different shape. The crop removes the difference from one pair of edges only, so the border comes out wider on two sides than on the other two. Here is a real 5:7 file with an even 6.4 cm border, printed at four sizes:

Moving the crop box does not fix this. The crop is already centred, so each pair of edges is even with itself. The two pairs are simply not even with each other.

If you want an even border at every size, build one product per shape and give each product a file drawn at that shape. Fine art paper sizes fall into these shapes:

A passepartout is not a substitute for a border you designed yourself. The mat window is a whole size step down, so its border is much wider than a designed margin, and on most sizes the mat changes the shape as well. See How does a passepartout affect image sizing and cropping?