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canvart - printing your photos on canvas

Your Photo Printed on Canvas - Tips

Welcome to our hints and tips page. Below you will find useful information to help you get the best out of your canvas print.

1. Selecting a photo for your Stretched Canvas more...

2. Resolution and Megapixels Explained more...

3. Camera/Photo Quality and Print Size more...


Selecting a Photo for your Stretched Canvas

Here are some tips on selecting the best photo to go on canvas. We carry out all of the work (cropping etc) that is described below, all you have to do is send us your photo!

Lets say you have the following photo that you would like to print onto canvas:



There are some factors to take into consideration:

  1. The Orientation/Shape of the Photograph

    This will determine whether your photo is suitable for a square print, or a rectangular print.

    The majority of photographs are rectangular shaped as a standard, so to use these for a square print, we will need to crop (remove) additional areas outside of the square shape.

    Although this photo is well suited to either a square or a rectangular print, we have decided to go with a square print in this case. Your photo will be cropped as follows:



                 


  2. The Location of the Main Subject(s)

    You will note that in the photo above the main subject (flower) is close to the edges. When we wrap your print around the frame, we require 40mm of the photo on each edge to go around the sides.

    (example based on 32mm frame depth)

    You will see here that we lose some of the flower from the front of the print, but this doesn't have a big impact on the look of the canvas.

    You may however prefer to have the entire flower on the front. In this case, we can wrap a plain coloured border around the frame instead.

    (example based on 32mm frame depth)

    This border does not have to be white, it can be a colour more suitable for the photo if need be.


    There are a couple of other techniques that we can use to retain the whole picture on the front. The first is to take a mirrored copy of the edge of the photo and reflect that on the sides.



    We can also stretch the edges around the frame. These options will depend on the photo, and may not be suitable for some pictures with for instance, people that are close to the edge.



    Or alternatively we can blur the edges, which is similar to mirroring, however this time the edge is blurred to keep the same colours, but without the distinct details.




  3. The Size of the Print

    The size of the print will have an impact on what we have talked about above. If you go to a larger print, then you will be able to have more of the details on the front.

    This is because the wrap is 40mm no matter how big the print is. For example, if your print is 400x400 then 10% of it will be wrapped around the sides. If it is 800x800 then only 5% of it is wrapped.
As stated above, we take care of all the cropping and sizing for you, all you need to do is send us your photo. Once we have carried out any adjustments, we will then email you a proof for your approval before printing.




Resolution and Megapixels Explained

A digital image is made up of many tiny dots called pixels, and each pixel can be one of many colours. Resolution in terms of a digital photograph represents the size of the pic, and this is normally measured in the number of million pixels (megapixels) the camera is capable of recording.

To calculate the number of pixels in an image we simply multiply the number of pixels wide by the number of pixels high as shown below.

megapixels   resolution

On the right we have enlarged a 1 megapixel image by 800% so that you can see the pixels that it is made up of. Each of the little squares is a different coloured pixel. When you enlarge a photo to a size above its resolution you will start to get pixelation, i.e. the individual pixels will start to become more visible to the naked eye.

The advantage of cameras with higher resolutions is that you have more pixels to work with, and can therefore produce bigger prints with your pictures. 



Camera/Photo Quality and Print Size

The digital photography industry in the last couple of years has gone through a period of exponential growth, both in terms of sales and technology.

For a couple of hundred dollars, one is able to purchase a really nice little camera that can take photos of a resolution that not so long ago, only the top-end professional digital cameras were capable of.

This is great for all of us, as it means that larger prints can be obtained from your photographs without any impact on quality.

The magic question that we are often asked is "how big can I go with my photo?"  There is both a science and an art behind the answer to this question. 

Using the megapixels (resolution) of your photo and the required pixels per inch, we can mathematically determine the size that we can print your photo to, without any enlarging/scaling. That is the science part!

The art part comes in when we scale your photograph bigger than its scientific size, without affecting the quality. At Canvart, we have the skill and the technology that enables us to do this.

The answer that we provide to that question is "Please send us your photo and we will let you know." This is because we have found that not all photographs are created equal, and some will enlarge better than others.

We will always let you know if the quality will be impacted by any enlargement of your photograph, before we go ahead with any printing.
 


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