How to best select from image and print full size?

[abrogard]

I want to select a portion of my images and then have the ability to print that portion so's it fills an A4 (usually) sheet.

Currently I can only think to put into Gimp or maybe Faststone and crop then make a new image from the crop and then print. And I don't think Faststone can do anything much for me when it comes to getting the image to fill an A4, I'm not sure about Gimp.

But I do know a few months ago I was doing something quite different on a friend's machine, in a hurry, and I stumbled across some piece of software that enabled me to resize just before printing - i.e. it let me zoom in or out. I don't think I was able to change the aspect ration so it was just a zoom. But still that was good.

But I don't know what that was now.

I'm thinking what I'm trying to do must be nearly the most common printing job in the world for photographers and graphic artists generally. So I thought I'd come and ask what's the best way of doing it nowadays?

 

[Ian]

Interesting question, as I sometimes need to do the same thing and usually just use the method you described. Sometimes I'll just use MS Word for cropping, as it's easier to get it to fit A4 paper dimensions that way. I'd be interested to know if there's a quicker way to to this.