Easy Canvas Print Review

Golden Gate on Canvas

Printing on paper bores me. Well, that's not true, but being limited to 8.5" by 11" annoys me. And I can't understand why manufacturers don't make wide format printer/scanner all in ones, with awesome color and detail. That last bit was meant as sarcasm as I'm sure those wouldn't sell very popularly. But since I don't have a wide format printer (or the desk space for it) yet, I've been curious about other print media for awhile.

Canvas prints are exactly how it sounds. Your photo is printed onto a canvas that is then stretched over a frame. There is more to it than that, if you want to get into the details, but for the most part that's the basics. Recently I got to try the process with Easy Canvas Prints, and I have to say I'm quite impressed with it. The canvas you see above measures 16X20 inches (40.64X50.8cm) or a 4x5 ratio, which was a little annoying because most of my photos come in at 4x3 so I needed to do some cropping. The photo area is 16x20 but there is roughly an inch and a half of wrap to get around the frame. You can choose to have your image wrap around, to have the edges be a mirrored part of your image, or to have a solid image. Because the far tower of the Golden Gate Bridge would have wrapped around I decided to make sure the whole image was shown on the front and to keep it simple with a solid color wrap. I think photos that have the subject more in the center would work better for being wrapped around the frame, but that's just me.

From head on

The frame itself is inch and a half particle board, which is nothing to brag about, but feels sturdy and not too heavy. The canvas came with hanging hardware attached to the frame and all it required was a tab of the wall hanger to get it up. The canvas is lightly textured which is part of the charm of a canvas print, but can be a drawback, I think, depending on the photo you choose. When I do this again I will have to work on how to output sharpen for canvas printing as I feel the photo is soft when viewed from up close, but I feel it is fine from about six feet away. All in all I'm quite pleased with this print and look forward to doing another.