Print 4 x 6 inch photos at exact size

4 x 6 inch photos laid out on a sheet at true measured dimensions and downloaded as a print-ready PDF. Used mainly in US/Canada.

Your photo never leaves your device

What 4 x 6 inch photos are used for

• The standard photo print size in North America
• Drugstore and pharmacy print counters
• Standard photo album sleeves and fridge magnets

What to watch out for

The North American standard, and marginally larger than the 10 x 15 cm used elsewhere. If you are printing onto 4 x 6 photo paper you are printing one photo per sheet, so the value of this tool there is getting the size exact rather than fitting several on.

How many fit on each sheet

Photo size	4 x 6 in	5 x 7 in	Letter	A4	A5	10 x 15 cm
4 x 6 in	1 borderless only	1	2	2	1	does not fit

The first number assumes safe margins and a cutting gap, which is what a normal home printer can manage. A bracketed number is what fits borderless, with no margin at all — untick Safe margins in the tool to use it.

Printing it so the size is actually right

1. Print at 100%, not "fit to page"

This is the step that undoes all the others. In Adobe Reader the setting is Page Sizing, and you want Actual size — not Fit, not Shrink oversized pages. In Chrome's print dialog, open More settings and set Scale to 100; the Default option often means 94% or 97%. If your PDF viewer offers no scale control at all, open the file in a different viewer rather than accepting whatever it decides.

2. Tell the printer the real paper size

If you are printing on 4 x 6 photo paper, the printer must be set to 4 x 6 — not Letter, not A4. A printer configured for Letter and fed a small sheet will scale, rotate or misfeed it.

3. Check with a ruler before you cut

Print one sheet on plain paper first and measure a photo. If it measures 2.4 inches where it should be 2.5, the scale setting is still not at 100%. Photo paper is expensive; plain paper is not.

4. Cut along the guides

The thin corner marks sit just outside each photo, so a straight cut along them leaves no visible line on the finished print. A craft knife against a metal ruler gives a far cleaner edge than scissors.

Other sizes