Canvas Print From Photo – How It Works, Part II

In Part I, we got your photo to the canvas printer and ready to print. Now, the rest of the process.

The computer programs used to take your “original” photo to “ready to print” are quite sophisticated. Your photo is evaluated, enhanced, etc., in one program. The printing of the image is done in another, utilizing a print template. Most canvas prints are printed for a gallery wrap, which is wrapping the printed canvas around the stretcher bars to the back. This makes for an elegant canvas and eliminates the need for a decorative frame but does not preclude one.

In the preparation phase, you will have found out if your photo image can be gallery wrapped or if a border needs to be added for the wrap. A word about borders. Since canvas does stretch, getting pluperfect alignment of the edges is nearly impossible and there will inevitably be some bleed over to one or two sides, though great efforts will be made to keep such bleed negligible.

The canvas most used is a poly-cotton blend – more resilient to time and stretches cleaner than 100% cotton. Your image is printed on the canvas using an inkjet printer and the inks are typically rated to 100 years for color integrity. This means that if you take reasonable care of your canvas, it will be around for generations! Once dry, the canvas print is coated with a protectorate (against U/V rays). This is usually an aqueous coating, not oil-based, and can be painted on should you want to add oil or acrylic paint to your finished canvas. The printed canvas should dry for a day and the coating needs anywhere from a few hours to a day (depends on the product).

The wood stretcher bars come in almost every conceivable length. However, most companies do only a specific set of sizes, staying with the most conventional. You usually have a choice of thickness of the bars, the two most popular being ¾”  and 1 ½”. The difference is how far off the wall it sits. The 1 ½” does make a much classier canvas. If you are going to add a decorative frame, the ¾” is recommended.

Stretching is an art in itself, needing to keep the canvas even on all four sides yet still accommodate the changes due to stretching. And if the image has a colored border, the job just got tougher! The canvas must be very taut which takes precedence over everything. This is why the print template  mentioned earlier is so important. The computer artist can see how the image will fit, can see the “face” of the canvas, and make adjustments before the canvas is actually printed. With bordered images, the frames may be assembled and measured (the bars are mass produced and are not perfect to measure!) so the print template can be adjusted accordingly before printing. This does not necessarily eliminate a bleed over but helps to minimize it.

There are many companies out there that print photos on canvas. Some do lots of different things and do the canvas printing as part of the mix. Most do the canvas prints exclusively. Be mindful that the entire process is quite involved and takes caring by the professionals you have “hired” to create your canvas. It is not like ordering out of a catalogue. You are taking something personal and creating a new something personal – whether the canvas is a gift or for yourself. Choose well.  Choose wisely.

Canvas Print from Photo – How It Works, Part I

You have made the decision to make a canvas print from a photo. Now,  you have to get your chosen photo to the canvas printer. If your photo is a digital, you can upload it to the company’s site. If your photo is a traditional photo, you can either mail it or scan it to a digital file and then upload it.

Let’s start with a digital photo from your camera. As you know, your camera has many settings for  resolution and image quality for various purposes. Unless you are a professional, it is best to set your camera at the highest resolution (most pixel capture for image clarity) and the best image quality (least compression).  If you don’t know how, get out the operating manual for your camera, find how to access these settings and set your camera properly for the best photos it can take (highest/largest size for resolution and superfine/best for image quality). When you take a digital photo, you want your camera to gather as much information as possible. If your camera does not capture the maximum information at the time of snapping the photo, you cannot add it later. It just won’t be there. If it isn’t there, you will be limited on enlargements.

If you choose a traditional photo, the best would be to mail it to the canvas printer. However, if you are afraid to part with it and want to scan it to a digital file for uploading, a few words of caution. Most home photo scanners are somewhat lacking in options and you may not get the quality of scan you need. Many stores these days have photo scanners but you must know what you are doing in order to scan for the best information in the image. It would be more appropriate to take the photo to an actual photography shop and let a professional scan it for you.

Ok, so you have gotten the photo to the printer. The first thing the printer will do – hopefully – is a pre-flight check of the image to be sure it has sufficient resolution and image quality for your requested size. If the image is deficient in any way, the company should notify you of the deficiencies so you have a choice to continue or not or perhaps change the size. Sometimes – especially when it is an old photo – you want it no matter, because of the memory or sentiment it conveys. And that is fine. It is done all the time. If your traditional photo has a lot of dust or scrapes, etc., the image will have to be cleaned up. Be prepared for an extra fee for this as such a feat is laborious and can take an hour or more, depending on the severity.  If there are objects or some such that you would like removed, it can nearly always be done. You need to ask. Again, there may be a fee for this.

The company will then evaluate your image for color, lighting, brightness, contrast, etc., and make appropriate adjustments so that your canvas print will be the best it can be. Canvas brings photos to life. The attributes of the photo (color, lighting, etc.) need to be all they can be so the image will be properly enhanced for the canvas.

Once your image is ready, you may be sent a proof of sorts to view for placement of the image as it will print. Your proof cannot be the actual image as the file size would preclude it getting out of or into anyone’s e-mailbox but a screen capture works. This type of proof has very low resolution and cannot be judged for clarity. A proof is mostly sent when there are placement issues.

Once all is ready to go, it is off to the printer! See Part II for the rest of the story!

Photography – Canvas Print – Canvas Art

Printing photos on canvas is not only a means of preserving your photograph for many years, thanks to the natural longevity of canvas, but doing so also creates unique, personal art. Unique, because it is from yours or another’s photo – photos that no one else will have unless you share it. Personal, because it is from yours or another’s photo  – photos that mean something special. And it is art because the source photo is an expression of the photographer.

I think sometimes people only look at canvas prints from photos as a means for doing family portraits. And that is a really good thing! But many forget all their other photos, those wonderful scenes captured as they viewed it  – with all its wonder. There is a great line in a movie from years back spoken by a character who had become a photographer. She said she looked through the viewfinder and would look around until a question or a curiosity arose like “how” or “why” or “when” – then she would snap the picture. This method applies to any potential photo, be it of people, nature, structures, whatever. I have seen incredible photos of flowers and insects and other tiny life that has been caught by a zoomed in lens, bringing a totally different perspective to the subject and giving it a world of its own. One of my favorites is the intricate spider web glistening in the sun, wet from dew. Nature is only one “genre” that has unlimited subjects for canvas art to grace your walls.

So, take your camera for a walk! If you don’t have nature areas to trek through where you live then just walk around the neighborhood…the park…even your town or city streets. Look for the large “money shots” then look within those shots…zoom in and see what is there, panning as you go for different angles, different perspectives.  I think sometimes we lack confidence and focus too much on what we have read or maybe learned in the classroom.  Try not to fixate on what you “think” good photography is (other than to have your digital camera set properly!), rather, step out of the classroom…step out of the proverbial box. If you are looking at a beautiful stream, look closer. Zoom in. Perhaps you espy an errant wild flower growing crookedly from under a small rock…maybe stones in the water that are only visible when you get right over top of them. Do you see any frogs, lizards or bugs? This is their world, their home…look for their experience.  Don’t forget odd shaped rocks…twisted trees or branches…the lonely toadstool…wild flowers up close and personal.

If you are photographing in a town or city, you have just as much – if not more – to investigate. Wherever you are, zoom in…view from standing…sitting…look behind, look down, look up…find different viewing positions – all of which gives you different perspectives of your subject. Explore!

Remember, with digital, “you can delete if you don’t like”. So, don’t be afraid. Be bold. It might be a good idea (unless you need the room on the photo card right then) to not delete till you have a chance to view it on the larger screen of your computer. You might be quite surprised at how clever you are. It would be reasonable that some of your photos are excellent…intriguing…interesting…creative…original and, best of all,  yours.

When you are ready to turn your wonderful photos into canvas art to grace the walls of your home – or to give as gifts – it is easy to do. You choose your photo, choose your size and get it done! Your canvas prints from your photos will be better than anything you could buy. Well done!

Your Pet’s Photo on Canvas

We love our four-legged children and do all sorts of things for them – play with them, buy them toys, take them for walks.  And we typically take lots and lots of photos of them. Where do those photos go? Maybe in a photo album…maybe in a box. The album is nice but why not create a canvas portrait of your best friend, instead? By printing his or her photo on canvas, you honor your beloved dog or cat and have canvas art to grace the walls of your home.  It’s a two-for!

A number of people who have competition dogs and cats already do portraits – on traditional photo paper. The competitions are best of breed types as well as hunting competitions for hunting dogs. These are special events and certainly the dog or cat is at it’s best – groomed, physically conditioned – the perfect time to capture all that is. So why not upgrade these great portraits to canvas?

But, hey, not all dogs and cats are show competitors. What about the dog sitting at the living room window peeking out around the curtain looking for you to get home? Having a bath? Leaping with wild abandon into the river? Sailing through the air to catch a frisby? Asleep and snuggled with your son or daughter…or the cat? Your cat sleeping in his or her favorite spot that is precarious or humorous…or standing guard over food he hasn’t a prayer of getting but is vigilant, nonetheless? What about the great shots of your pet wearing a Christmas hat or bunny ears…or one not at all particularly unique – just your furry best friend being your furry best friend?

An idea to consider is doing a collage of all your pets through the years.  If it is a collage, the individual photos don’t have to be “perfect” as they will be smallish on the canvas. You could do your collage in “bulletin board” style…one over-lapping another or just evenly space the photos. You can put the names of the pets under each photo, as well.

If you are going to use one photo for your pet portrait, as with any other photo you would choose to create you canvas print, be sure the subject of the image has plenty of peripheral background for wrapping. Yes, a border can put around your image to use for the wrap part but canvas stretches – it is a fabric – and the canvas must be very, very taut. The tautness of the canvas takes precedence over aligning borders and such. No matter how carefully things are measured and printed accordingly, it is impossible to predict how the canvas will stretch and there will be negligible imperfections in alignments. However, the best thing to do is choose photos where the subjects of the photos are in the center and surrounded sufficiently by background, rather than photos where the dog’s or cat’s nose or ears are right at the edges.  And while we are talking about tight shots, it is always best to NOT crop your images before you upload. Again, this limits the company’s ability to do their thing. If you want a photo cropped a certain way, advise in the Comments section that you have a cropped version you’d like to send to them to use as a guide and ask them to contact you.

Your canvas printer will have suggestions for you, as well, and will guide you through the process if you do not know exactly what you want. Having your special four-legged family members on canvas prints from photos hanging on the walls of your home will bring smiles for years to come. These furry best friends have warmed your hearts, let their visage on canvas warm your home.

Canvas Print from Photo Booth Photo

Those of us who are “older” remember the fun times getting our photos taken with our best friends or significant others in photo booths. Sure, the black & white photos were almost sepia in color, the lighting was horrible – yet those photo strips were some of the best photo memories of our youths. Truth or not? And how often do you see those photo booths in malls and such…so tempted to go in but, alas, “reason” takes charge of the impulse (as well as preservation of dignity!) and you move on.

Well, good news!  If you have not experienced the new photo booths, you are missing out. These new versions use high resolution, color digital cameras – and much better lighting! You can have all the crazy fun in posing with your BFF or whomever and get a photo strip of really good pictures. They still come in the vertical strip and, if the booth is at a special event, the bottom panel may designate the event with date and location. These new images are really good.

An added bonus is you can get canvas prints from photos off this strip – select one or two or do all four! It is a little bit funky to create a canvas in the vertical format. In order to have the images large enough, you would have a long vertical canvas…not really appropriate for most walls. However, as these strips are made up of four separate images, each can be separated out to make four individual photos and can be arranged any way you would like. You could lay them out horizontally or in an arc or in a stair-step arrangement. The possibilities are many. Since most companies gallery-wrap, it might be best to float the images against a black or other type of background so that the images themselves are not wrapped and show only on the face of the canvas.

Do be prepared that, when you send your photo strip off to the canvas printing company, the work will likely be treated as a collage and there will probably be extra fees associated. Why? Because each photo will be separated out and adjusted individually. Once all the images are ready for placement in the print template, the print template will have to be prepared – usually a color fill is done (black is best, typically)  - then the images will have to be placed appropriately in accordance with the design of choice. If your intent is to use just one of the four images in the photo strip (example: you want a canvas print from photo, say, number 3 in the strip) there may not be an extra charge.  By the way, if your photo strip was taken at an event, it is pretty cool to add that last panel in the strip that names the event to your canvas. Part of the memory, you know?

Do be mindful that if you think your photo strip is something you would like to make into a canvas, take good care of it. You want to keep it free of scratches and other marring. If your photo booth strip was taken at an event, like at a hotel, you may be able to get the digital file from the hotel.

Now, get out to the mall or wherever and visit those new photo booths (make sure they are the new color digital ones!). Then send your photo strip in and get a wonderful canvas made. Canvas prints from photos taken at a photo booth are the most fun!

Canvas Print From Photo – What Will You Get?

Canvas prints from photos are all the rage and well they should be. If you have not seen one up close and personal yet, you need to. Canvas lends an ambiance, if you will, to photographs like no paper can. Canvas brings the image to life…gives it character…depth…a type of energy. I apologize to the purists out there who believe that nothing is better than fine, quality photo paper. Canvas steps on their toes in this regard. Not intentional but true.

Canvas is classic and classy. That will not change. In addition, it has a longevity factor that paper does not and cannot have. It is the nature of the beast. Add the protective coating that is typically applied to canvas prints from photos and you have a hands-down choice.  The only thing you then have to “worry” about is what photo to choose. The most common choices for photos printed on canvas are of new digitals taken of family, scenery, flowers and the like – all beautiful and all making gorgeous canvases.  It is also true that the quality of the source photo relates directly with the quality of your canvas print. You want your source photo to be the highest it can be for resolution and the least compressed for image quality.

However, that being said, what about the old photos we have…the not-so-goods? Maybe they are dirty or have scratches or they are a bit cloudy or faded but the photos, themselves, are of great sentiment. Maybe the photo was taken “on the fly” but the scene captured is so magnificent it could never be duplicated – like, an expression on someone’s face…or a particular group of people…some fond memory that maybe deserves to be given the honor and longevity of being printed on canvas.  Such a canvas print from that sort of photo might be the most endearing gift someone – a family member or a friend – might ever get. Now, you could expect to pay extra to have the photo cleaned up as best as possible before printing but if the photo is worth doing, it is worth paying a little extra for, don’t you think?

People spend money on all kinds of gifts for family and friends that are nice but can tend to be ordinary. A canvas print from a special memory photo would trump anything. A canvas print is art that will hang on the wall. It will be seen and enjoyed every day like nothing else. And let’s not forget that the texture of canvas will breathe new life into an old photo, making it even more pleasurable to view. Get out your photo albums. Find those special pictures of your grandparents or your parents as children….maybe Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe. How about you as a child?  What about a collage of generations – photos taken of each at approximately the same age. Make your family tree a photo tree.

One of the things I think would be very fun would be to have a collage of Christmas mornings through the years.  How about school pictures…running yours and your kids’ side-by-side, first through 12^th grade? Can you imagine? Wow. The point is, there are so many wonderful things you can do for your photos and your memories by printing them on canvas – whether it is a collage or a single subject. It is nice to do the quality image photos on canvas, no doubt about it, but don’t forget the meaningful, memory-filled photos that might not be of “quality image”.

Printing photos on canvas is a wonderful way to display your photography. A canvas print from photo makes wonderful canvas art for your home. And printing memory photos on canvas to give as a gift of love is priceless. So, the next time you have a gift opportunity coming up, do something different. Do something special. Find that special photo and have a canvas print made. If it is a gift, it will be unique and personal and the person who receives it will love it. If it is just for you, it will be unique and personal and you will love it.

Printing Photos on Canvas and Digital Photo Tips.

Printing photos on canvas & digital photo tips are two things I’ve wanted to write about for some time. I’ve been reviewing and enlarging photos for canvas for several years now and I’ve seen some common mistakes and little things people could do to improve their photos.

Most people probably think of digital photos when they consider printinga photo onto canvas.  Companiesthat do this work, have upload capabilities that can be done right from the computer. This is certainly easy but it is not the only way to go and we must remember our favorite traditional photos that we want transferred to canvas.

Let’s talk about some tips for taking photos.

RESOLUTION: relates to the pixel count captured in the image. The denser the pixels, the better the resolution and enlargement is easy. Low resolution will cause your image to pixelate when enlarged. In accordance with your particular camera, you want to set it to the largest setting, typically shown as something like 3888 x 2592. Such a setting limits the number of photos you can take before downloading but you will have the quality and won’t miss out on the option to enlarge!  Storage is cheap.

IMAGE QUALITY: relates to compression.  The greater the compression, the less quality you will have (high compression is good for emailing but not for enlarging).  Higher compression will result in ghosting and blotchy colors when enlarged.  So, however it is designated in your camera (check your manual), you want to set your camera to the least compression.

PERSPECTIVE: is the angle from which you are shooting. This is especially important when taking photos of your kids or your pets. Get down at their level. The photos you take will be much more personal and natural and will make that canvas art more enjoyable as well.

CAMERA LEVEL: I can’t count the number of photos I’ve corrected because the person shooting didn’t take a moment to level (hold it straight) the camera to the horizon. Yes it is easy to fix with a photo editor but take a moment and save yourself some time. When a photo is enlarged for canvas printing the horizon becomes much more obvious and critical to the final outcome.

TRADITIONAL PHOTOS: For your traditional photographs from film, there is no way to know if they are useable until they are scanned and the digital image evaluated. Obviously, newer film cameras are a lot better than some from 20 and more years ago.  Whether digital or traditional, your photos will be evaluated for their desired size and you’ll be notified if there are any issues.  Likewise, old damaged traditional photos can usually be repaired and brought to sufficient “health” for canvas printing. Depending on the extent of the work required, this might cost a little more.

A canvas printer usually won’t just print your image as received. If attention is needed – even if it is just to brighten the image for printing – it will be done. We have sophisticated and specialized software to enhance your images for the best possible canvas print but remember that the quality of the source photo directly relates to the quality of the canvas print.

We’ve put together a list of 10 Tips for Great Digital Photographs. I’ve discussed a few of them here and how they relate to printing photos on canvas.  Visit our website if you like to down load them as a free gift from us to you.