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Posts Tagged ‘picture canvas’
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
Travel photography is one of the best ways of communicating the amazing experiences you may have had whilst travelling the world. Whether you’ve captured a moment of full-on culture shock or glimpsed something that makes an exotic location unique and memorable, some travel shots demand special attention. This is when canvas printing comes to the fore.
We’ve seen some incredibly diverse images come through from people’s travels… landscape panoramas from all corners of the globe. Street art collages. Towering urban architecture. Thousands of images of the world’s most famous landmarks. Having the standout images from a collection printed onto canvas can be the perfect way show off your favourite holiday moments.
Tags: Canvas Printing, canvas prints, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas, printing on canvas, travel photos
Posted in canvas prints | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
As the canvas printing industry grows it becomes critical that you find a supplier that is using the best materials available, so you get the best canvas print.
The only way that you can be sure that the canvas being used by your supplier is best quality is independent colour testing. There are only a small number of laboratories worldwide that are considered an authority on colour reproduction, longevity, fading etc. The most highly regarded of these is Wilhelm Imaging Research.
Rigorous testing is done on the permanence of inks, make-up of the canvas or paper and their reactions in dry, dark, light, humid and protected conditions. The results are then published so anyone can access them. It is vitally important that the lab be an independent body and recognised as such. Otherwise there is no way to guarantee the results of the testing.
If the canvas is an unknown brand or it hasn’t been independently fade-tested, then how can you know any good? Canvases of unknown brand, origin or construction may be prone to fading over time or even yellowing over time.
Genius Printing offer the Canson Infinity canvas and paper range. The canvas has been tested to over 100 years of colour lasting.
Tags: 100% cotton canvas, Canson Infinity, Canvas Printing, canvas prints, colour lasting, colour testing, low resolution, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas, poly cotton canvas, printing on canvas, UV Damage, UV Protection
Posted in Latest News | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
A big question that you have to ask yourself when you’re printing your photos on canvas is what wrapping type you’d like to use. The wrapping is the canvas that goes around the edge of the frame. Genius Printing offers four options, Gallery, Genius, No Gallery and Pixel Bleed.
A Gallery wrap uses the image itself to wrap around the frame. So using a Gallery wrap means you’ll lose part of the edges of your image. So you wouldn’t want to use it when someone is standing at the edge of the frame.
As you can see with this Gallery wrap (indicated by the red shading) a large portion of the image is being lost to the wrapping. In this case we are losing part of the hammer, which we want to keep as it’s the focal point of the photo.
The Genius wrap can help fix this problem, al it does is crop the image to the shape of the canvas frame. It then copies the edges and flips the onto the wrap. This gives the appearance of the image wrapping around the edges without the loss that you get from a gallery wrap.
The Genius wrap works well with the majority of images, although it does tend to have issues if there is a focal point of an image near the edge. For instance if there is a face near the edge of an image then it will look pretty odd if it’s mirrored onto the edge!
You can also just opt for a No Gallery wrap. This is either blank canvas or a colour of your choice. If you can’t find the colour that you want you can just enter the RGB numbers into the order notes.
This is just a neutral grey border. Many people may not want to use a solid border as it won’t work aesthetically with either your photo or the room you want to hang it in.
The last standard option you have for a wrapping type is the Pixel Bleed. This takes the edge pixel of the image and stretches it around the frame. It works great in circumstances where a Genius wrap won’t work.
One issue that can crop up with the Pixel Bleed is that it can tend to look ’streaky’. If that wouldn’t work for you then this isn’t the wrap to choose.
It all comes down to personal taste, but there are a few things to look out for. Happy printing!
Tags: Canvas Printing, canvas prints, canvas stretching, Giclee Printing, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas, printing on canvas, stretched canvas, Wrapping type
Posted in canvas prints | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
There is a way that many businesses try to cut their costs for canvas prints, many skip properly stretching the canvas. No one talks about it on their sites, but canvas tension is very important.
When you receive your canvas prints they should be very tight, there should be no visible slacking. This means that when they sit on the wall they will look nice, consistent and even. If they aren’t tight then they will sag, and believe me… You’ll notice. Many seek to cut their costs by simply folding the canvas over the frame and stapling it down. This just doesn’t cut it if you want a good quality end product. The canvas should be properly stretched using canvas pliers (and preferably by someone with the proper training!), this is the only way to get the best tension on the canvas print.
When you receive your canvas and pull it out of the packaging it should be taut like a drum, if on the other hand you can see it sagging against the frame then you should call the company and ask them why they choose not to properly make their canvas prints.
This may sound a bit harsh, but we strongly believe that if you’re going to offer a fine art product like canvas prints, then you should do everything possible to make it the best it can be. After all if you put your favourite photos on canvas and hung it up in your house wouldn’t you want it to be the best it could be?
Tags: Canvas Printing, canvas prints, canvas stretching, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas, poly cotton canvas, stretched canvas, Stretcher Bars, tension
Posted in canvas prints | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
So you’ve just taken a beautiful photo of the sunset and you want to turn it into a canvas print. Unfortunately the horizon isn’t straight. Well don’t worry, straightening the horizon is a very simple process in Photoshop or similar software. Here is a quick guide on how to do it in PS.
Open your photo and select the ruler tool.
Make a line with the ruler between the two ends of the horizon.
Select rotate canvas arbitrary, click ok.
 
This will rotate the image so that the horizon is now straight.
You now just need to resize the image to eliminate the the odd sides. Select the whole image, select transform and then enlarge the image until you can’t see the white.
  
You now have a straight horizon ready to put your photos on canvas!
Tags: Canvas Printing, Giclee Printing, Horizon Straightening, Image Manipulation, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas
Posted in Tech Tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Stretcher bars are an essential component of canvas prints. They literally hold everything together!
So when you print your photos on canvas then it’s important to have high quality bars. It is essential that your printer use kiln-dried bars. These may be almost any type of wood, the most common is pine. If wood isn’t kiln-dried then it still contains moisture. This moisture will eventually leave the wood, the result is warping and shrinking. This can leave your canvas slack and misshapen.
Kiln-drying wood gets rid of all the shrinking and warping during the drying process. This means that your kiln-dried stretcher bars won’t shrink or warp when assembled. It also crystalizes any sap (tannin) pockets, eliminating the possibility of tannin leeching.
The other question to ask is whether to use soft or hardwood. Typically people use pine (a softwood), and there is nothing wrong with pine, it’s cheap and easily sourced. Alternatively hardwood can be used. There is a bit of a stigma about using hardwood because of the association with old growth logging. However not all hardwood is old growth wood. Genius Printing uses Eco-Select hardwood, this hardwood is forested using methods approved by the Green Building Council of Australia. So yes, our wood is ‘green’.
The other myth out there is that all hardwood leeches tannins. This isn’t the case. ALL woods contain tannins, some more than others. Many hardwoods do have large amounts of tannins as do many softwoods. When talking about tannins you must be specific to the particular timber you’re using and the the grade of timber you’re using. Genius Printing uses Eucalyptus regnans, commonly known as Tasmanian Oak or Victorian Ash. It has a low amounts of tannin present, it is easy to work and the grain is straight with long and clear sections without knots. This wood is highly regarded by builders, furniture makers and architects. The wood Genius uses is furniture grade meaning it has no sap pockets present in it.
Hardwood stretcher bars have much greater tensile strength than pine stretcher bars. This means you can have much longer stretcher bars without having to increase the profile or size of the bar. Another advantage is that hardwood grows slower than pine which means the grain grows closer together, as well as greater strength. This also gives hardwood greater moisture resistance. All wood will re-absorb moisture eventually but hardwoods will take significantly longer to re-absorb than pine.
So the main thing to worry about with your canvas prints is whether the bars are kiln-dried. But if you have the option between hardwood and pine, hardwood is the better choice. Why would you buy a Holden when you could get a Mercedes for the same price?
Tags: Canvas Printing, canvas prints, hardwood, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas, pine, Stretcher Bars, tannins
Posted in Tech Tips, canvas prints | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
After many headaches and late nights at the computer the new Lens Trends is finished. It’s where you can get other peoples photos on canvas !
Lens Trends features a library catalogue of thousands of images covering a variety of categories from imaginative generic images for domestic and office canvas display, to artistic digital interpretations of people and places, countries and cultures, history, landscapes, plant, bird and animal life from around the world.
All images in this library have been supplied by customers of Genius Printing. Genius Printing is Australia’s leading canvas printing supplier.
All images in this library can be purchased for printing onto canvas. You pay for the price of the image and then the cost of printing it onto canvas by Genius Printing. The cost of printing depends on how large you’d like the image printed.
Tags: Canvas Printing, canvas prints, image library, photo canvas, photos on canvas, picture canvas, printing on canvas
Posted in Latest News | No Comments »
Friday, July 17th, 2009
If you’re looking at printing photos on canvas you may be having trouble with selecting a size to print your image at. It can get quite confusing when trying to find out whether you can print your image at a certain size or not.
Well never fear! There is an easy soloution. Just use the Image Calculator on the Genius Printing website. It’s as simple as uploading your image, telling it what size you want and then it will tell you whether it can be printed at that size or not.
It gets even better, if your image is too small then we offer a $15 upsizing service. This isn’t just pressing a button and making the image bigger, it’s a manual process done in Photoshop, every image is different and needs to be treated as such. The image is smoothed out, sharpened and modified so we can get the best result from your image. I should know because I do most of them!
We only do what is necesarry, over upsizing can be just as bad as not upsizing at all. It is important to remember that upsizing an image does not give you more detail or make the image better than it was before it was upsizied. What is does do, is make it possible to print the image MUCH larger than you would normally be able to and look great to boot.
Some people recommend a high dpi like 300. This will give the best results, no question about it, but unless you have a seriously expensive professional camera then getting an image to print at 300dpi at even medium sizes just isn’t possible. We know that when printing on canvas you can print at as low as 100dpi before even needing to upsize. We do it all the time and get amazing results. Even professional photographers are amazed.
There are a couple of reasons why canvas works so well for large scale images. The first is that canvas is a soft and heavily textured surface so it doesn’t show fine detail and reversly doesn’t show that lack of fine detail. The second is that canvas prints are not meant to be looked at from a close distance like photo prints. They’re designed to be hung on a wall and looked at from a distance. So if there is a lack of detail in an image, or it’s a little soft, then you won’t notice when it’s got prize place in either the lounge room or the art gallery.
Tags: Canvas Printing, DPI, how big?, low resolution, photos on canvas, picture canvas, Upsizing
Posted in canvas prints | No Comments »
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
If you’re researching canvas printing one question that constantly pops up is whether you should use 100% Cotton canvas or Poly/Cotton canvas.
Nearly everyone you’ll come across will say they use a 100% cotton canvas and claim that it’s better than a blend. This isn’t exactly true. A high quality 100% cotton canvas is better than a cheap poly cotton blend (like those imported from China by many major retail stores). But the reverse is also true, a high quality poly cotton blend is better than a low quality 100% cotton. So don’t be fooled! The question to ask is not about cotton or polyester, it’s about independent fade testing, OBA’s, weight and the brand.
Because of a misdirected demand for 100% cotton canvas some canvas printers will SAY they use 100% cotton, but ACTUALLY use a poly/cotton blend! You might get a brilliant print, but it’s not fair to advertise one thing and sell another.
Genius Printing uses the Canson Infinity range of canvases, offering a poly/cotton blend and a 100% cotton because once you use the world’s best brand of canvas, then what it really comes down to is an aesthetic preference.
The Canson canvases are independently fade tested, completely OBA (Optical Brightening Agent) free and manufactured using world’s best practices.
Canson Artist, Archival Poly / Cotton:
The canvas will not yellow, crack or curl and is an ideal choice for a variety of applications including portraiture, fine art photography and demanding giclée requirements. It has a gesso base in it that helps to almost completely eliminate cracking when stretched. It has a smooth, more uniform weave than 100% cotton. It is best suited to photographic images.
Canson Museum, Archival 100% Cotton:
This premium, OBA-free archival canvas is the optimal choice for a variety of giclée applications for artists who demand modern technical excellence in concert with the texture, feel and body that only an all-cotton canvas can deliver. It looks more ‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’ than poly / cotton. This is characterized by a rougher and less uniform weave. It is best suited to artistic and illustrative reproductions. It works especially well when reproducing paintings.
The most important factors when choosing a canvas type to produce your important images on are independent fade testing and the absence of OBA’s. If a canvas isn’t independently fade tested then there is no guarantee of the colour lasting. If it contains OBA’s then the canvas will eventually begin to yellow and discolour. The Canson Infinity range has been independently fade tested to last up to 120 years without fading.
You should also look for a good heavy canvas, as this will make it more dimensionally stable. This means that it can be stretched to greater tensions without warping or ripping, and it also means that over the decades it will be much less likely to sag and lose its tension. Some canvas is barely thicker than the paper in your home printer! The poly cotton used by Genius is a hefty 390gsm and the 100% cotton a huge 440gsm.
Finally, check out if the company you’re researching is advertising the brand of canvas they use. If they’re not, then they most likely are using a cheap import.
Tags: 100% cotton canvas, Canson Infinity, Canvas Printing, photos on canvas, picture canvas, poly cotton canvas
Posted in canvas prints | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
One of the most common questions with canvas printing is what dpi the photo should be printed at. While there is no correct answer, for the best results you would want to be printing at between 240 and 360 dpi. However, you can print on canvas at as low as 100dpi and still get amazing results! But that’s not what I’m writing about today. There is a common misunderstanding about the relationship between dpi and print size etc. I’m hoping I can help de-mystify it!
A digital image is made up of pixels (dots). These are little squares of different colours that when put together make an image. So lets say you have a 6 megapixel camera, that means that your images have 6 million pixels in them, or 3000 pixels across and 2000 pixels down. Now lets say that you open up the image and it says that the size of the image is 30″ x 20″. That means that the dpi of the image will be 100. This is because for every inch of width there is 100 pixels.
If you were to change the size of the image to 10″ x 6.66″ then the amount of pixels in it won’t change but resulting dpi will. At 10″ wide our image is now 300 dpi. Because every inch has 300 pixels in it’s width.
So you see how our 6 megapixel image can be both 300 dpi or 100 dpi. The DPI of an image depends on the actual size of the image when going to print. The larger an image is printed, the lower the resulting dpi will be. As you increase the print size the pixels need to be printed larger, therefore less can fit in an inch.
Upload your own image using our image calculator and give it a go!
Tags: Add new tag, Canvas Printing, DPI, low resolution, photos on canvas, picture canvas
Posted in Tech Tips | No Comments »
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