When is a square not a square?

Answer - when its a pain. Even when expressed politely it's hard to get it across to clients that their images are rarely square. I don't mean they should be described as "oblong" or "trapezoid", it's just that they are not quite square. Why? Typically it's a result of the way prints pop out of processing labs. Recently they've been using machines that have inside them giants rolls of photographic paper onto which they print your image, then a mechanical guillotine whips across the paper and your print drops into the output tray. Very, very close to square, but often not quite.

If you try to square off the print you have a problem, very often two edges are not cut truly on the square. Inside our scanner is a computer chip which has been given the job of managing the scanning process. As the print goes through the system receives a massive amount of data from which it has to construct an image scan. What does the poor algorithm do? First, it could chop away some of the image and create within your print a true square, discarding some data. I can just imagine the outcry "You've chopped off Uncle Harry's nose!" Put it back, immediately. Second, it could create a shape as close as possible to a regular one outside the image. No data is lost, a small grey / black strip is added; and that's the option Kodak went for. When I think about it that's the only sensible option.

So here's the deal. If you want not a trace of black infill, send us images with four 90 degree corners. Better get it dead right because we operate down to 1/600th of an inch.