Consumer Behavior when Zooming and Cropping Personal Photographs and its Implications for Digital Image Resolution

This paper discusses a pair of experiments in which groups of consumer photographers were given the opportunity to crop and zoom their pictures. In the first of these studies, a group of 33 customers were intercepted as they obtained their print orders from their photofinisher. While reviewing their prints, the participants were asked which of their pictures they would like to zoom and crop. The users were then asked to use a collapsible template with a 2:3 aspect ratio to draw zoom and crop lines on the selected prints. These data were analyzed to determine the proportion of prints the users want to crop and the amount of cropping that was applied. In a second study the film of a group of 14 customers was intercepted, these pictures were scanned to a KODAK PHOTO CD Disc and the users were asked to use a computer-based tool to place a fixed 2:3 aspect ratio crop box in a subset of their photographs. This data was analyzed to determine the amount of cropping that was applied, as well as some guidelines for computer-based crop tools. This research shows that consumers wish to apply cropping to roughly 40 percent of their photographs. Some differences in the amount of cropping were observed between the two experiments.