PhotoImageArt.co.uk

Canvas prints – also known as giclee canvas prints, wall canvas, box canvas prints – are a fantastic personalised gift idea, allowing you to give a truly unique gift to those you’re particularly special to you.

There was a time not so long ago that unique photo canvas prints cost hundreds of pounds, even for relatively small box canvases. Like all technologies, prices tend to decrease as the advancement in technology decreases the price of the equipment, and as more competition adds motivation for prices to drop. This is certainly what has happened with the canvas printing industry over recent years – and this is very good news, as canvas prints are now even better quality in terms of the quality of the print & colour fastness – but they’re also now far less expensive, meaning that they’re affordable to the masses, rather than the fortunate few.

This isn’t at all to say that personalised canvas prints are any less unique – because of course the uniqueness is all down to the image itself. That photograph you have of your kids playing on the beach, or of the dog when he was a puppy, your daughter riding her horse, or whatever it may be – is completely unique, and personal to you – or to the person you’re having the canvas produced for as a very special & unique personalised gift.

So if you’re looking for gift idea’s, and you would like to give someone special a gift which is completely unique – canvas prints are the perfect choice.

Don’t you find that people get harder to buy gifts for, the older they get?

Children are usually not much of a problem to buy for, children like toys – regardless of the age, the toys just get bigger, and more expensive with age.

Young adults aren’t too much of a problem to buy for, but then as we get older, it becomes more & more difficult to buy gifts that you really want.

In fact, a good sign that you’re growing old, is that you get a lot of boring gifts.

The main characteristic with the dull & boring gifts that tend to be given to older people, is that they’re impersonal, and quite often unwanted. Well, no one really knows what you want, what you’re going to enjoy, so it’s difficult.

But there is a way out of the monotony – with personalised photo gifts.

From one extreme to the other, you really can get no more personal than personalising a gift with a photo which is of importance to the recipient, whether it’s a photo of a memorable event, a special person – a special pet, whatever it may be.

The king of the personalised photo gifts is of course the photo canvas print.

What used to be a privilege only few could afford – thanks to developments in technology over the years, it is now very affordable to have photographs transformed into high quality canvas prints.

In fact at Photo Image Art, our photo canvases start at just £19.99, and include free photo restoration & any required special effects such as black & white, sepia, pop art / Warhol effect & much more.

So don’t get stuck in a rut with gift buying, get personal, with personalised photo gifts – and if you really want to give a gift to remember – the canvas print is the way forward.

So, you’re looking for a gift for your grandparent or grandparents, whether it’s Christmas, Mothers day, Fathers day, wedding anniversary – whatever the occasion may be, what do you give as a gift to your grandparent or grandparents?

A plant? Flowers? A new Scarf? Slippers?

The standard grandparent gifts are a bit boring aren’t they? And if they’re boring for us, they’re going to be even more monotonous for them, receiving the same kinds of gifts from family members all the time, can’t be very exciting.

If you want to give your grandparents something that will really fill them with joy, you really can not do any better than taking or finding a special photo, and having this turned into a high quality canvas print.

Canvas prints are one now of the most popular gifts for the older person, and really the reasons are quite apparent. When you’re a child you want toys, when you’re a big child (also known as adult) you want bigger more expensive toys – when you’re older, and enriched with the experiences life has offered, you have memories, treasured memories – an there can really be no better gift than to immortalise special memories & special people, onto high quality canvas wall art, to be enjoyed for years to come.

So, the next time you’re thinking of a special gift for grandparents, and you really want to raise a smile – don’t go out & buy a plant, or a scarf – find a really special photo, and have it transformed into a high quality canvas print.

This mothers day – surprise mum, by having one of her favourite photo’s of the kids transformed into a high quality canvas print.

Also, surprise grandma / Gran / Nana – with a personalised photo canvas print of the grandkids.

You can’t give a mum or grandma any more special a gift than their children / grandchildren, so if you really want to make mum / grandma happy this mothers day – the photo canvas is the way to go.

Canvas prints are no longer a very expensive gift – although there are still some outlets which charge very steep prices, advancement in printing equipment & increasing competition has caused an increase in the quality of photo canvas prints – but a decrease in cost – making photo canvas prints a very special but very affordable gift for any occasion.

Are you looking for personalised gift ideas that really mean something to near & dear ones?

If so, one of the most popular personalised gifts of our time, the personalised photo canvas

- also known as box canvas, stretched canvas, and canvas wall art – has got to be the number one candidate.

Despite the huge success of photo canvas prints over the past few years, there are still some people who have not been exposed to this idea – if you haven’t then read on – but if you have, you may be very surprised by the advancements which has taken place in canvas printing technology over recent years – leading to increased quality & decreased costs as a result.

When canvas printing was in its infancy, the concept attracted many people – however the prices put most people off, as it just wasn’t very affordable to begin with, due to the cost of the equipment & consumables, and the fact that not many people could afford the equipment meant that there was not much competition to push the prices down.

However over the period of a few years, advancement in printing technology has reduced the price of professional canvas printing technology, which has increased the competition in the industry, and as a result of increasing competition and helped by the internet revolution which has also taken place over the past few years - the prices of personalised photo canvas prints have reduced a great deal, while the quality of prints has increased.

Today, photo canvas prints are extremely popular, and are growing still in popularity, thanks to the stunning results given by today’s canvas printing technology, and the fact that they’re now affordable.

It is right that canvas prints should continue to flourish in popularity, as the number of people taking their own photographs is also increasing enormously, while the number of people actually printing out their photo’s is decreasing at the same rate – as just about everyone now has a digital camera, and most people do not have digital photographs professionally developed, which means that as a result many of us have hundreds of fantastic photographs on file, on hard drives & memory cards, that will never be enjoyed, even if they’re printed they are usually printed on home desktop printers, which do not usually produce particularly high quality & colour fast prints.

So, embrace the canvas prints revolution as many others have done, and actually do something worthwhile with the great photographs you have sitting idle on hard drives, disks & memory sticks.

Save your photos from the murkiness of having a only digital existence, and breath life into them by having them transformed into dazzling photographs that will take you back to memorable times & events whenever you look upon them.

And do it while you still can…..

We all have packs of old photo’s in cupboards, in lofts – in the future, will we have old hard disk drives in lofts, old memory sticks & camera memory cards – if so, how long will they last, and will computers in the future be able to read these files, if in fact they are still readable at all??

You may think this is going over the top, but really it’s not, just look at how fast technology is increasing. Do you have any files or images on floppy drives? They were very much the norm only a small number of years ago – they’re now pretty much obsolete. Anyone aged 30 something or older can remember vinyl records like they were yesterday, and even reel to reel.

The chances are, if we don’t do something with our photo’s, they’re not going to be sitting around in attics and cupboards in ten or twenty years, many will have been lost on obsolete & failed storage devices, and this is a real shame.

So – stop this from happening, find your favourite photo’s, rescue them from their temporary digital homes that will one day be lost for ever – and transform them into canvas art prints, that you’ll be able to enjoy for many, many years to come.

Why not bring heart-warming memories back to life and create art from your photos, by turning them into canvas prints.

Canvas prints give photos & artwork a rich, textured appearance – and using deep chunky wooden frames, give printed canvases a very high quality look.

The boom of canvas printing as an industry, has been made possible by the way that canvas arts brings photos and art work into a new dimension, adding a great deal of value in the process, this has been made possible thanks to the developments in digital printing technology.

Thanks to the increase in printing technology, and the decrease in price allowing more companies to get involved in canvas printing, more & more companies & individuals have begun producing canvas prints over the past few years.

The increasing competition in the world of canvas printing is great news for the customer, as it means that canvas prints are now affordable to everyone, gone are the days where the only people who can afford personalised canvas prints are the rich & famous.

Only a few years ago, it wasn’t unusual to see price of hundreds of pounds or more for large canvas prints, while there are still some outlets & photographers charging a very high price for high quality personalised canvas prints, canvas prints are available from a number of outlets both online & offline, for very affordable prices.

What to look for in a canvas print

There are many providers of canvas prints at affordable prices, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is offering quite the same product.

When looking for a company to turn your photos / images into personalised canvas prints, some of the area’s you should pay attention to are :

• Quality of the frames
• Quality of the inks used
• Quality of the canvas itself
• Quality of any pre-print design work
• Level of after-sales service offered
• Level of pre-sales service offered.

Quality of the frames

The quality of the frames the canvas is stretched onto, is very important. While there are ready made, factory made frames available on the market, these are generally not as high quality as hand made frames produced to order by the company producing the canvas prints.

Quality of inks

There is a range of different inks available on the market, ranging drastically in price from being the same price per ml as cheap beer, to being the same price per ml as very high quality champagne. The difference however isn’t only in the price, but in the colour fastness of the prints. The more expensive inks on the market offer UV protection for many years, whereas the cheaper inks on the market often offer a lot less UV protection. Also, the more expensive inks are usually a lot more consistent in terms of colours, which means that your print is more likely to be true to the original photo or artwork in terms of colour reproduction.

Quality of the canvas

There are various qualities of canvas available for printing, the better quality canvas used, the better the print will look, and the longer it will remain looking this way.

Quality of any pre-print design work

There is often a certain amount of preparation that is needed in terms of editing & modifying an image before printing the image onto canvas, the more experience the designers have, the better this work is likely to be, which will have an effect on the finished canvas print.

Level of after-sales service offered

How well will the company look after you as a customer in the future, after you’ve parted with your cash?

If you buy the canvas print for valentines day – for example, and by summer you have an issue, such as a problem with the frame warping, colours fading – whatever the problem may be, how will the company react?

Admittedly it’s quite difficult to know this, but there are good indications, for instance how long has the company being trading for? If the company has been going a long time, the chances are that they offer a good after sales service, as companies who do not usually do not get a good enough level of repeat business & referrals to keep trading for a long period of time.

Looking for a company with a good trading history is one of the best ways to ensure you’re going to get a good after sales service – but also ask the company, don’t be afraid to ask the question “what happens in future if I have a problem?” Also, check their website, does the website give the impression that they’re a company interested in looking after their customers? If it’s a very well made website, which has cost money to produce, a company is unlikely to do this & then offer a terrible service, usually how much time & effort has gone into designing the website, is an indication of how serious they are about the business.

Buying canvas prints from Auction websites, from sellers who do not sell canvases on their own website, and who do not have their own physical presence other than on the auction website, can be a tricky business in terms of after sales service. We’re not trying to say that companies who do sell their goods on auction sites do not offer good service, but that if the company doesn’t also have it’s own presence online – giving you their full address, contact details, and full details on the company, you have no real way of knowing anything about the business, and whether or not the company is likely to provide a good service.

Ignore feedback

It’s not a good idea to take auction website feedback into consideration when looking for a reliable company to purchase from. Feedback has to be given within a short space of time having received the goods, so all this is an indication of is whether or not the company is providing the goods – it’s not saying anything about the after sales service offered by the company.

Level of pre-sales service offered

Although pre-sales service isn’t a perfect way of gauging how a company is going to treat you once you’ve parted with your cash, it does give you an indication.

If you put in a request for help before you’ve bought from a company, and they’re not very forthcoming with help & support, then it’s unlikely they’re going to be any better than this once you have purchased from the business. So requesting help prior to purchasing is one good way of being sure that you’re going to be looked after properly once you have purchased from the company.

Watercolour

At PhotoImageArt, we can turn your photo’s into watercolour canvas art prints.

Watercolour Canvas Prints

The watercolour effect works very well with landscape photography, but can also look very effective with people & pets.

All of our effects, repairs & alterations are offered free of charge, all part of the service of turning your photo’s into fantastic looking canvas prints.

For more information on our canvas printing effects, see the canvas prints help & tips section of our website.

At PhotoImageArt, one of the many free effects we can offer with our personalised photo canvas prints, is the pencil sketch effect.

Pencil Sketch Canvas Prints

Our designers can professionally turn photo’s into pencil sketch images prior to transferring onto canvas.

Most people are under the impression that adding effects like pencil sketch & the other effects we can offer, is just a case of clicking a buttton within a graphics program, and that anyone can do the same on a home PC. While to a certain degree this is true – anyone can apply an effect using a peice of software – but as with everything, there is a big difference between something being done DIY style rather than being done by a professional who does this day in & day out for a living.

Our professional designers know how to get the best performance from the software used, and have access to the latest graphics programs, dedicated design computers powerful enough to run these resource-hungry programs, and have put a lot of time & knowledge into preparation in setting the programs upto produce fantastic results.

So the free effects that we offer, including Pensil Sketch effects, are of a lot more value than a simple click of the mouse.

For more information on the free effects, alterations & restorations that we offer with our photo canvas prints, see our canvas prints help & tips section.

Canvas Prints - Red Eye Removal

It’s always disappointing when a nearly perfect photo has been spoiled by red eye.

However, if you’re considering having a photo turned into a canvas print, you don’t need to worry about red eye, as red-eye removal is just one of the many  free image alterations & effects that we carry out free of charge, as part of the service of turning your photos into canvas prints.

when you have a fantastic photo that has been spoiled by red eye? This isn’t a problem, our designers can get rid of red eye with ease – giving you a canvas print which looks perfect.

Redeye removal is just one of a huge range of different professional effects, adjustments & repairs we can make to your photos & images to make your photo canvas look perfect, if you have any idea’s at all for ways to make your printed canvas look extra special, just give us a call and one of our design team will be happy to assist you.

At photo image art one of the many free effects that we offer with our canvas prints, is the cartoonize effect.

This is just one example of a cartoonized image, we can add a series of different effects to give different kinds of cartoonize effects, starting from subtle effects that make a photo look cartoon drawn, to heavier effects such as this example, which gives the photo a retro pop art style look.

As with all of our effects, we will professionally  cartoonize your canvas prints free of charge.

For more information on the free effects we offer, see the canvas prints help & tips section.