Imagine grandma un-wrapping a canvas print of her grandkids on her birthday, or at Christmas. Not just a traditional photo enlargement, mind you, but a canvas print that looks like an oil painting, stretched and ready-to-hang, for only about $100! She will remember this for years to come, and you will be the hero.
Never mind that you burned down the barn when you were 10, and totaled the family car at 16.
Everyone knows about digital cameras and what they have brought to the photo-taking experience. What most people may not know is what can be done with digital images today to make them extra special and personalized, at very affordable prices. This article is about one of those ways; a painting from your favorite photo, on canvas - a real work-of-art.
The fantastic thing about digital images is that the photo image can be improved and even modified to make something better than the original. It’s like plastic surgery – “it still looks like you, only better”. But this digital manipulation requires a high degree of skill with digital editing software as well as the use of special digital printers to render the final print on canvas.
How is this done? There are a number of companies that advertise digital printing on canvas. You can find one by googling “Photoart” or “Photoart on canvas”. Prices vary quite a bit, but the average for a 16X20 in the oil painting style is about $100-125. Look for a company that is offering a special deal, like a discount, or 2-for-1.
It starts with you downloading your image to the company’s website and choosing your size and style. This is very simple to do. The rest is up to the photoart printing company. The first thing they will do is check the image for any major problems – low contrast, faded colors, poor cropping, red-eye – and fix them, at no charge. For the oil painting technique, there are a few more steps involved before printing. Because the image is going to be “digitally painted” by an artist, it is necessary to boost the colors and contrast a bit, mask out the eyes and other fine detail, apply some Photoshop artistic filters to the image and then turn it over to an artist to digitally paint with a stylus. This is where the real talent comes in – different “brushes” and brush techniques are used for faces, on landscape and for clothing to simulate a real painting. When done well, it is hard to tell the difference between a real painting and a digital painting.
The final step is the printing and finishing of the digital painting on museum-grade canvas using a special inkjet printer. The printed canvas is sprayed with a laminate that protects the image from water and light and extends the life to 80-100 years. Make sure the company can guarantee your final print for at least 80 years. The canvas is stretched over an internal wooden frame using a technique called gallery-wrapping. This simply means that the image extends over the edges of the frame so it can be hung on the wall without the addition of a costly decorative frame, just like in an art gallery.
One of the other great aspects of the custom digital painting style is that even a marginal photo can be salvaged using the techniques described in this article. Unlike traditional photo enlargements that are largely subject to the quality of the original photo, digital editing and painting can be used to bring a photo back from the dead and really make it sing.
Grandma will love it!
Bill Loeber
is founder and president of www.PhotoArtPeople.com, a digital printing company that specializes in transforming everyday photos into canvas masterpieces. His company focuses exclusively on photo canvas printing, with customers all over the world.
