Canvas Dezign Blog

Canvas prints and Giclee prints are becoming increasingly popular in the UK and in the other parts of the world. They are highly versatile as they can be used to decorate your walls at home or office. You will be able to do away with the monotony of empty blank walls with canvas prints. This is one of the cheapest ways of decorating your homes and offices. To meet the increasing needs of the customers, there are many canvas printing companies emerging on the internet claiming to be the first and the best.
The difficulty is in identifying the best canvas printing company for your needs. Whether you are ordering your canvas prints for your own needs or to gift someone or to use it as corporate gift, you need to make sure that you are getting good quality canvas prints. One of the most crucial factors you need to check is whether your canvas printing company has enough experience in this industry.
Without enough experience, they will not be able to produce high quality canvas prints or Giclee prints. First they should know which photos are good for printing on canvas. Not all photos are good for printing in canvas or not all of them are ready to be printed on canvas. So to identify the best shots and to prepare the best shots to make it suitable for canvas printing, your canvas printing company needs experience.
Secondly, they should use high quality canvas printing material and for this they should know from where they can get the canvas printing material at the best prices so that they will not only be saving themselves some money but also provide you with reliable quality canvas prints. Experienced companies would have tried variety of suppliers and they will use suppliers that promise good quality material consistently.
Canvas printing is an art and as you can guess for any art to be perfected it requires a lot of practice. So it goes without saying that your canvas printing company if they have lot of experience in dealing with variety of photos and images for canvas prints, the overall quality of your canvas print will also be good.
Moreover, experienced companies that have been in the industry that have perfected the art of printing photos on canvas would have optimized their expenses and overheads. This will allow them to give better pricing for your needs. You will be able to get your canvas prints at very competitive rates from experienced companies. As you can see there are many advantages in getting your canvas prints from a company that has vast experience in this field. So it would be unwise to choose a company knowingly that they have very limited experience to get your canvas prints.

Not every one is aware of the advantages of Giclee prints. The term Giclee comes from the French word that means spraying. Giclee prints are made using high quality printing inks that are used for archival purposes. Giclee prints are made on canvas rolls and they use the latest technology printers to ensure the highest color accuracy and best resolution.
To make Giclee prints you will need high resolution inkjet printers. There are many latest technology inkjet printers from major brands such as HP, Epson and more. These printers will be able to produce detailed prints that resembles close to artists painting. This is one of the most cost-effective ways of owning artwork. Not all of us can own original paintings as they are highly expensive. Giclee prints help art lovers to own art work at fraction of the original cost.
There are number of advantages in using Giclee prints. If you are an artist who likes to produce many copies of your artwork, it will take a lot of time. In such situations, you can go for Giclee prints. You will be able to mass produce your artwork as and when required without having to spend a lot of time repainting them. Moreover producing exact copies of their own artwork is also not possible but with Giclee prints, artists will be able to get exact copies of artwork without having to spend time on each print. The cost of producing Giclee prints is also very cheap.
You can archive your artwork in digital format and make Giclee prints as you need them. You will also be able to have your artwork reproduced in any size as per your customers’ requirements. Moreover, you will be able to have a copy of your artwork archived in digital format.
For those who love artwork but cannot afford them because of the budget constrictions, Giclee prints come as a great gift. Giclee prints are easily affordable and one can choose just about any famous painting and have them transferred to canvas sheets. One can have a complete collection of their favorite artist’s paintings in Giclee prints at fraction of the cost.
Printing one’s favorite art work using inkjet printers on canvas will make the prints look almost like original painting expect for the visible brush strokes. Thanks to the latest technology printers that made Giclee prints possible and above all affordable.
If you get your Giclee prints from a reliable canvas printing company that has good experience, then you will be able to get astonishing prints. You will be able to enhance your collection of artwork with some of the finest Giclee prints. Canvasdezign.co.uk specializes in producing premium quality canvas prints.

Today we received some feedback from a customer who was so impressed with our canvas art prints, she sent us a letter and some chocolates.

The customer ordered the canvas prints as an Xmas present which we delivered on time and with in 24 hours of ordering. It is when we receive letters like this that everything becomes worth while.

Here is yet another twist on how to use canvas prints.  We supplied a canvas to the bride and groom who displayed the canvas and asked all their guests to sign it.

What a great idea for a canvas print. We are often asked of new ways of coming up with ideas for canvas prints. Here is just one of them.

The diagram below, taken from Jonathan Sachs’ excellent tutorial on Color Management for computers and is a simplified illustration of a color-managed workflow.Programs that utilize color management are described as being ICM-aware, where ICM stands for Image Color Management. ICM standards are maintained by the International Color Consortium.
In a color-managed workflow, the color response of each device, each image file, and each image in the computer’s active memory is characterized by a file called an ICC profile. ICC profiles have the extension “.icm” and are stored in specific locations on Windows/Mac computers.

ICC Profiles consist primarily of tables that relate numeric data, for example, RGB (222,34,12), to colors expressed in a device-independent CIE color space called a Profile Connection Space (PCS)– either CIE-XYZ or CIELAB. The colors may be the objects sensed by a scanner or produced by a printer or monitor. They can also refer to one of the numerous color spaces. Monitor profiles have the same format as color space profiles. Profiles may contain additional data, such as a preferred rendering intent and gamma, Monitor profiles often contain instructions for loading video card lookup tables, i.e., for calibrating the monitor.

The heart of color management is the translation or gamut mapping between devices with different color gamuts and files with different color spaces. Mapping functions are shown in the yellow boxes in the illustration, above. They are performed by a Color Matching Module or Method (CMM), also called a Color Engine, using data in the profiles. The CMM combines the input and output profiles, both of which are referenced to a PCS, to perform a direct conversion between the devices or color spaces. It interpolates data in printer profile tables, which would be prohibitively large if all possible color values were included.

Gamut mapping is performed with one of the four rendering intents (gamut mapping algorithms) recognized by the ICC standard and by Windows ICM 2.0. The rendering intent determines how colors are handled that are present in the source but out of gamut in the destination. Since there are several nomenclatures for gamut mapping, I use a color code to distinguish the sources: ICC, Windows ICM 2.0, Picture Window Pro. I’ll generally stick with the ICC nomenclature.

1. Perceptual, also called Picture or Maintain Full Gamut. This is PW Pro’s default, and is generally recommended for photographic images. The color gamut is expanded or compressed when moving between color spaces to maintain consistent overall appearance. Low saturation colors are changed very little. More saturated colors within the gamuts of both spaces may be altered to differentiate them from saturated colors outside the smaller gamut space. In the diagram on the right, the left and right of the color space blocks represents saturated colors; the middle represents neutral gray. Perceptual rendering applies the same gamut compression to all images, even when the image contains no significant out-of-gamut colors. Bruce Fraser points out that for an image with unsaturated colors, e.g., with pastels, Relative Colorimetric rendering may produce a slightly more accurate result. Perceptual gamut mapping is mostly reversible; it is most accurate in 48-bit color. None of the other rendering intents is reversible.

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2. Relative Colorimetric, also called Proof or Preserve Identical Color and White Point. Reproduces in-gamut colors exactly and clips out-of-gamut colors to the nearest reproducible hue. Not reversible. See diagram. Bruce Fraser says, “Look at the relative gamuts of your source and destination: The same image may need different rendering intents for different output process. For example, an image might benefit from perceptual rendering when printed to an inkjet printer, but when the same image is going out to the much larger gamut of a film recorder, relative colorimetric rendering might work much better. If an image doesn’t contain any important strongly saturated colors, you’ll probably get a better result using relative colorimetric rendering than you would using perceptual.”
3. Absolute Colorimetric, also called Match or Preserve Identical Colors. Reproduces in-gamut colors exactly and clips out-of-gamut colors to the nearest reproducible hue, sacrificing saturation and possibly lightness. On tinted papers, whites may be darkened to keep the hue identical to the original. For example, cyan may be added to the white of a cream-colored paper, effectively darkening the image. Rarely of interest to photographers.
4. Saturation, also called Graphic or Preserve Saturation. Maps the saturated primary colors in the source to saturated primary colors in the destination, neglecting differences in hue, saturation, or lightness. For block graphics; rarely of interest to photographers.

CanvasDezign use absolute colormetric for canvas prints as we believe this gives the best colour rendition without the sacrifice of quality or colour clipping.

Computer monitor screens emit color in RGB colour space (red, green, blue) light. Although all colors of the visible colour spectrum can be produced by mixing red, green and blue, computer monitors are capable of showing only a limited colour gamut. Colour gamut is the visible spectrum.

Where monitors emit light, printed paper absorbs or reflects specific wavelengths of light. Cyan, magenta, yellow inks act as filters, subtracting varying degrees of red, green and blue from white light to produce a selective gamut of spectral colour. Like monitors, printing inks also produce a color gamut that is only a subset of the visible spectrum, although the range is not the same for both. Consequently, the same art displayed on a computer monitor may not match to that printed in a publication. Also, because printing processes such as offset lithography use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) inks, digital art must be converted to CMYK color for print. Many printers now prefer digital art files be supplied in the RGB color space with ICC profiles attached. Images can then be converted to the CMYK color space by the printer using color management methods that honor profiles if present; this helps preserve the best possible detail and vibrancy.

Refer to the Instructions for Authors for your journal to determine if files should be supplied as RGB or CMYK. Some printers may prefer your files be delivered in RGB with ICC profiles attached, as this allows the printer to use color management methods when converting to CMYK. Other printers may prefer your files in the CMYK (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black) mode, as this is the mode required for the printing process. If an RGB (Red/Green/Blue) file is submitted, it must be converted to CMYK for print. When the conversion takes place, color shifts can occur and TSG will do our best to reproduce as close of a match to your printed output as possible.

It can sometimes be difficult to visualize the reason for color shift in color space conversion. The best way to see the color differences between the CMYK and RGB color spaces is to look at a color gamut comparison chart. The chart to the left plots the visible color spectrum as the large “horse shoe” area, and within this is a plot of the CMYK colors, and the RGB colors. You can see that in some areas the RGB color space is “outside” that of the CMYK space. It is these colors that will be affected by a conversion from RGB to CMYK

Most desktop scanners, digital cameras, and video capture systems save files as RGB and the conversion of RGB files to CMYK can be done in many ways. RGB converts to only CMY directly. However, when printing, we must add black ink and in doing so must cut back on some color. The Undercolor Removal (UCR) setup will help control this ratio so that a maximum ink density for the four colors will be 280-300% when printing on a coated paper printing stock.

Digital art that is comprised of spot colors (e.g., special colors: any colors that are not CMYK process colors), generally require conversion to the CMYK color space to enable file use. Because color gamut’s for spot color libraries, such as those associated with the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM, usually extend beyond the ranges of the CMYK color gamut, some spot colors may not be represented effectively using CMYK process inks.

We found this great little video on Youtube. Apple Macs have been in the Graphic Design industry now for years. Leading software companies have always used the Mac as a platform for Graphical Tasks.

CanvasDezign have been using macs for making photos to canvas for over 10 years.  I personally have been using Apple Macs for nearly 19 years now.

See what was your first Mac on this video. Mine sadly was the LC - showing my age.

Here is another example of another fine piece of canvas art. We have included a front view of the photo on canvas as well as one from the side.  The side view is particularly interesting as it shows the quality of the folded edges and the canvas backing.

Our parent company planb , have just received confirmation that it has secured a deal to license our award winning Virtual Ordering Software for canvas prints.

This will ensure more money is invested back into our site and into our Flash Technology. Details will emerge soon…….

We have recently been trying out a new product and it has had a very good response so far. It is made from canvas prints, wallpaper, cushions and soft furnishings.

As you can see in the roomset we did, we have combined the use of wallpaper, manufactured at Concept Coverings and mixed it with our canvas prints.

We can also match the fabric of the cushions to the wallpaper or maybe even a mug or placemat.

Canvasdezign is now offering much more than just canvas prints. We are the one stop shop for soft home furnishings.

Our new website is going to include the facility to buy, canvas prints, wallpaper, canvas pictures , cushions, mugs and cups, placemats and coasters, curtains and blinds as well as pretty much anything that can be customised in your home.

Stay tuned here for photos onto canvas