Shutter Mike Photography

As the hobby of photography continues to grow and as digital point-and-shoot, DSLR and even mobile phone cameras become commonplace in most households amateur photographers are always looking for unique and creative ways to display their photography.  The 4×6 print in an album just doesn’t cut it anymore.  Countless companies have popped up on the web with photo printing on everything from mugs to t-shirts even pillow cases.  And as you can imagine, the quality varies as much as the pricing from company to company.  Photo key chains and mouse pads can be a cute novelty display of your photographic talents.  But one method of printing your images for display that is becoming ever more popular and affordable is canvas photo prints.

A canvas photo print is just as it sounds, your photography printed on artist canvas, think PBS’s Bob Ross painting a happy little tree type canvas.  This method of printing photography, when done well, makes an image appear like a work of art.  Of course you generally have to start out with a quality photograph.  Composed well, interesting subject and such.  Although many of the canvas photo printers out there today will do image correction for you, they haven’t invented the post-processing software yet that fixes a boring photograph.

You can get a photo printed on canvas everywhere from Costco to well known online photo printers like Shutterfly to smaller specialty printers.  So how do you know who to chose and who can print a quality final canvas print versus those that crank out mediocre “mass-produced”  prints that you would not want hanging on your closet wall much less over the sofa?  Read the reviews!

I recently got a canvas print from Easy Canvas Prints, one of the online specialty canvas printers – in that canvas prints is all they do, no photo dog tags or place mats here.  Here are my thoughts on Easy Canvas Prints as one of your options when considering who to turn your next photographic masterpiece into something you can hang on your wall to oooh and ahhh the neighbors.

• Shipping Time: I placed my order on a Wednesday, it shipped on Friday and I received it on Tuesday.  Seven days from start to finish is pretty fast turn around.  If you take out that weekend from the shipping equation it was only a 2 day shipping time.  No complaints with that.
• Packaging: Easy Canvas Prints’ packaging is something a lot of companies can take lessons from.  Bottom line, they took great pains to make sure the product was going to make it to me in one piece and without any scratches or dents.  We all know UPS and FedEx can get a little “careless” transporting a package cross-country – it happens going from truck to plane to truck to doorstep.  But what Easy Canvas Prints has done is to first wrap the canvas in stretch film, then in bubble wrap, then they sort-of suspend it in the middle of any over-sized box.  This method of packaging means that even if it does get dropped or crushed chances are good the canvas inside will make it through unscathed.
• Image Quality: The image I had printed was black and white.  So first off I cannot comment on the “true to color” aspect of Easy Canvas Prints.  But we can do some inferring based on the image quality of the canvas I received.  As is the nature of computer monitors, without calibrating and all that fancy stuff, no two are going to display an image exactly the same.  So you have to understand that what you see on your screen is not what the printer will see on their screen (exactly).  So expect some variation in the final product compared to how it looked on your monitor.  What sets a good printer apart from a great printer is their ability to minimize this variation and get your final print as close to “reality” as possible.  My print came out darker than I saw it on my monitor with the grays more pronounced.  But in the end, the image was sharp, the tones of black and white were defined and I feel that overall image quality is very good.
• Overall Product Quality: Easy Canvas prints uses archival inks (not the non-water proof inks some canvas printers use) and cotton-based material for the canvas itself.  The construction of the frame is solid and the canvas is secured to the frame well with plenty of staples.  Product quality is top notch and these canvas prints should hang over your sofa (or wherever you choose to place it) for a long time.
• Final Rating: My final review of the canvas print I received from Easy Canvas Prints is five out of five cameras.  Production and shipping time totaled about a week, including weekends.  The packaging made sure nothing was going to damage the canvas on its trip to me.  The overall image quality and the construction of the frame were very good.  So if you are looking for something a little different than a standard photo paper print to hang on your wall, canvas prints are a great option.  And of all the possible printers out there Easy Canvas Prints produces a quality product that you are likely to be very satisfied with.

Disclaimer - Easy Canvas Prints gave a free canvas print for reviewing purposes.