I was looking at getting a photo printed on a large canvas for display. I’ve never done this before, nor do I know much about it. The site I’m looking at is Imagekind, and to get a large canvas (32" x 23") on a glossy finish, I’m looking at $144 plus shipping.
I was wondering if anybody has had their photos printed on canvas like this before and could comment on how well the image does in transferring to canvas? I understand that the source image influences this. The pictures were taken with an 8 megapixel camera, and the sire seems to indicate that is plenty good enough. But even so, how sharp is the image transfer?
Also, are there other online sites doing this that you would specifically recommend? Is $144 an outrageous price for this service?
$144 is overpriced for a 32x23 canvas print. You can get 24x36 for $85 at mpix. $80 if you mount it on double matboard instead of a stretcher frame.
I’ve printed on canvas twice before (through Photoworks, but I don’t think they offer it anymore), both times from a 6mp image made with my Nikon d70. I was very pleased with the results. If anything, canvas is more forgiving of lower resolutions, since the resulting image isn’t expected to be tack sharp.
Of course, I only printed on smaller 8x12 canvases, so it’s hard to say how an 8mp image will look on a 24x36 canvas. If I had to guess, however, I’d say it should be fine. The larger an image is, the further away people tend to stand when viewing it. So while I may not hold up to scrutiny when viewed from an inch away, it should look fine to a casual viewer standing at an appreciable distance.
An 8 megapixel camera will only get you photo quality prints at about 10"x8", or about the size of a piece of paper.
300 DPI is considered photo quality. Your 3 foot wide (or tall) canvas is going to require printing at about 100 DPI (3266 pixels / 32"), which will be noticeably fuzzy from a couple feet, although it would probably look fine from 10 feet away.
I actually do want it gallery wrapped on a stretcher frame. And according to the MPIX site, a 24x36 would set me back $170, and a 24x30 would set me back $150 so the pricing seems to be about in line with the imagekind site I looked at.
The picture is going up on a wall over a fireplace so it isn’t going to be given close scrutiny so I guess the fuzziness won’t be an issue.
