Photobloc Blog – Canvas Prints

Have you ever looked at the Wall Art in the homes and offices sampled in design programmes and thought wow, then shopped around and realised how much it costs! Misspelled
True, there are cheap alternatives but they are mass-produced and therefore hardly unique.

Take far more personal images from your family photos, something that means so much to you, these are the images that should be displayed as your own wall art.

But how? easy, select the images and submit them to us for canvas printing, a selection of your favorite photos reproduced as canvas prints will enhance your home and produce that bespoke wall art look but be unique to you and your family.

Canvas photos of your holidays or places of interest that you have visited, family occassions, what ever is important to you when reproduced as a canvas print will become your own bespoke wall art, exceptional effect for but a small price.

Driving home last week I passed a sign advertising a ploughing and hedgeing competition on the following Saturday, intrigued by this I decided to investigate further.

Saturday came and I went to watch. There was the serious competition between various farmers but more intereastingly a demonstration competition between two old steam powered traction engines.
These mechanical giants of yesteryear went head-to-head with ploughs across a large field. Wreathed in steam and accompanied by thier unmistakable smells and sounds, these beomoths dragged the heavy plough back and forth across the field to the cheers and admiration of an enthusiastic crowd studded liberally with photographers, myself included.

Next they re-equipped them-selves with chains and in an incredible show of pure strength, ripped massive tree roots from the ground along the hedge row. It was like watching mechanical gladiators!

My camera was busy capturing the show-down for a great selection of forthcoming canvas prints.

These were followed by the majestic teams of shire horses, each brilliantly turned out. Resplendant with thier dark leather work contrasting with the polished brasses, twinkling in the Autumn sunlight as these gentle giants of bygone days laboured seemingly effortlessly up and down the field turning row after row of perfect furrows. The crowd were delighted, as were the competitors at this show of strength and skill.

I must admit that I too was equally delighted with the canvas printing that resulted from my camera and its busy day.

Whilst some I will keep exactly as they are before I print on canvas, some of the more atmospheric I will convert into sepia tint canvas prints to remind me of a great day out.

As the Summer closes and Autumn approaches we see a remarkable change of colour in the landscape.
The last of the Summer’s harvest is brought in with scenes of intense agricultural activity, tractors piled high, dust swirled fields as the massive harvesters complete thier work.
The trees and hedgerows change colour as greens fade to golds, reds, yellows and browns.
Blue skies give way to slate grey and clouds.
Incredible sunsets and sunrises.

All in all my favourite time of year and the time when the cameras should as busy as possible gathering all these wonderful views.

The fields are gradually textured with plough lines like a giant woven textile, very reminicant of the texture of the canvas print hanging above my desk. It was taken around this time last year and still has the power to evoke a fond smile.

You can have your canvas prints reproduced exactly as your original images are in splendid full colour.

But this is not the only way to print on canvas as there are several options to choose from such as:-

Sepia Tint – We can convert the coloured images in to Sepia to give them that old fashioned look.

Black and White – They can be converted in to Black and White for that classic look.

Spot Colour – Or we can Spot Colour them for a more contemporary feel.

This done by converting the whole image to Black and White and then through the digital histories, slowly bring key parts of the image back to the original full colour.

August Bank Holiday is upon us once again, but what will you do?

Some will go holidaying abroad and some in the UK. You may prefer quite, peacful walks in your own area. You may even plan to be visiting friends or having friends stay. There are no-end of barbeques and parties to attend.

It makes no difference which sort of break you have as long as you enjoy yourselves, because that is exactly what the August Bank Holiday is all about, relaxing and letting off steam.

But remember to take loads of photographs of where ever you go or what ever you do because then you can select the best and have them turned into canvas prints. Either for your selves or for those special friends and family as reminders of this great summer break.

So get snapping and enjoy!

Does your favourite picture have red eye?

Don’t despair for we can quite often remedy this before we print to canvas so your picture can still become one of your canvas prints without the red eye to distract from the overall effect of the picture.

Red eye is caused by reflection of light on the eye’s pupil when taking the photograph, it only occurs when the light catches the eye at certain angles.

In certain animals a similar effect can be found only there the eye turns green, likewise we can often remedy this as well. Some computer packages have editing tool to do this automatically but for the best results let our experts do it for you using a variety of tools and computer design techniques.

When working on your images always “save as” rather than save until you are sure that what you have done is correct, that way the original will always still be there to go back to if you need to.

Often the original download is corrupted by editing or saved in the wrong format, if the above advise is followed this can be overcome.

Often images submitted for canvas printing are in low resolution format and therefore not usable, reversion to the original high resolution version is therefore essential if we are to complete your order and successfully print on canvas your chosen image.

Whilst canvas prints are popular they are only as good as the information contained in the image submitted, it is therefore important to maintain the highest possible resolution of image when you are editing them.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a canvas photo or a canvas print of an original drawing that you are ordering, the same basic rules apply.

I recently attended a large, multi-period re-enactment show and saw some of the best action shots imaginable taking place right in front of my eyes.

From the splendour of Imperial Roman Legionaries to Napoleonic Guardsmen performing thier drill, the colourful costumes and equipment made for some of the best opportunities to print on canvas.

The Gentlemen Duelling in the 17th and 18th Century display gave such fluid movements and real action shots just begging to become canvas photos.

The large number of World War Two fighting vehicles were likewise both diverse and impressive, close-up images capturing the flavour of bygone days contrasting well with the Living History Camps dotted around the site. These varied from Romans with thier leather tents, Vikings and Saxons with thier canvas shelters to English and American Civil War encampments with thier lines of soldiers tents and accompanied cook-houses.

All-in-all a great day out resulting in some wonderful action shots for canvas pictures.

I recently visited the pontcysyllte viaduct near Langollen with friends and marvelled at the early engineering as well as the incredible views from the centre as it passes over Glen Ceiriog, a view just made for capturing on canvas print.

The Ceiriog river twists rapidly beneath, writhing between stands of trees whilst the local houses climb the steep sides of the Vale forming both Trevor and Froncysyllte through which tumble narrow lanes.

The other side of Froncysyllte you climb steeply and then meander down a leafy lane past another ancient view worthy of capturing as a canvas photo, Offa’s Dyke.

Then past Chirk Castle, its dark stone walls in complete contrast to the bright blue sky formed my third view of the day.

Left down to Chirk itself brought us back to the canal, through two spectacular Tunnels before arriving back at the viaduct just as the sun was setting.

All in all a journey well worth taking and some unusual views to print on canvas.

There are many different formats that you can save your images in and like-wise sources to get images from or to create them.

As a rule mobile phone cameras will only produce a low resolution thumbnail which is generally too small to reproduce as a canvas print.

Digital cameras usually have a sliding setting which will allow you to take many images without downloading, but they will be fairly low resolution and so therefore won’t allow much enlargement without subsequent loss of quality. However if you set this to the opposite end, although you won’t be able to take as many images before downloading they will be of the highest resolution and therefore able to be enlarged and as a print on canvas.

Internet downloads are generally tiny images at low resolution intended for you to see what the images is before buying it and therefore are again too small for canvas printing. There are a few sites that will allow the downloading of larger format images for free. As a general rule of thumb, if the image is at least 5Mb when open and a fairly large image area they should be alright for most canvas print sizes.

If in doubt, you can always submit your images to our Image Check Team for verification of suitability and advice on best formats etc before placing your order for a canvas print or canvas photo.