Continuing our series on Holiday pictures and decorations…

If you’re planning a pet portrait, especially one to be printed on canvas, incorporating a seasonal theme is a great way to add color and interest.  With the fall and winter holidays approaching, Christmas might be the first theme that comes to mind, but don’t ignore the other holidays of the season.  More and more, people are appreciating Thanksgiving as a holiday that has all of the food and togetherness of Christmas, but almost none of the stress.  Thanksgiving is a perfect day for doing nothing but eating, napping and playing, so it stands to reason it would make a perfect theme for a photo portrait of your cat.  While dogs might give cats a run for their money in the eating and playing department, when it comes to napping, kitties are the hands-down champions.

While you might be tempted to dress Rover up in a black pilgrim’s hat and musket for a Thanksgiving portrait, it’s an urge you should resist with Fluffy.  Cats have a natural dignity that is foreign to most dogs, and, unlike them, tend to be insulted when you try to adorn them with silly hats.  Though where Thanksgiving is concerned, I should probably note that this ‘natural dignity’ will fly completely out the window should you leave the half-eaten carcass of your turkey out in an accessible area.  I distinctly remember one Thanksgiving where my Uncle Ronald’s cat, Oliver, ate his way inside an unattended turkey and was discovered trapped beneath the wishbone when my cousins went to the kitchen for a sandwich.  Much to Oliver’s consternation, his embarrassing predicament was indeed captured on film, and while it’s not the sort of thing most people would want to stage for a portrait, it does offer some ideas.

Allow your cat – just this once – on top of the table after everyone has eaten but before the dinner plates have been cleared away.  A photo of Miss Kitty licking her chops and looking pleased with herself while surrounded by the remains of mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie would make both a one-of-a-kind portrait and an amusing memento.  Football is another welcome diversion of the season, so why not use a jersey from your favorite college or pro football team as a background for your cat’s photo?  Drape it over the back of your sofa or a chair and wait for Kitty to come investigate.  (Since cats always want to be where they’re not wanted, shooing her away from it once should guarantee her continued interest.  If she resolutely ignores it, however, try sprinkling it with a little catnip.  If that fails, break out the leftover turkey.)  Another idea would be to use your own family as a backdrop.  Nothing says ‘Thanksgiving’ quite like a sofa-full of groggy relatives napping after dinner with a contented kitty curled up amongst them.

There’s hardly a more familial holiday than Thanksgiving, and if you consider your cat to be a member of your family, then a Thanksgiving theme would be perfect for a portrait of your feline friend.  If you need any pointers, call us at (888) 784-5553 or email us from our website www.canvaspress.com and Canvas Press will be glad to help.

-Karen from CanvasPress.com

Christmas and Halloween seem to get the lion’s share of everyone’s holiday decoration budget, but there’s no reason to leave out Thanksgiving, especially when photo to canvas prints make such unique and beautiful decorations.

While the images of Christmas – Santa, reindeer, angels, stars, and evergreen trees – and those of Halloween – jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, and black cats – are quite particular, those associated with Thanksgiving are somewhat less so.  Halloween shares its pumpkins with Thanksgiving – though they have generally become pies by then – and Christmas shares its turkey and lavish family dinners.  Crisp days, autumn leaves changing color, and football – either participating in friendly family games, or watching the pros on TV – are things we associate with both Thanksgiving and the fall season.  The only things that Thanksgiving doesn’t seem to share with the rest of the season are the images of our pilgrim forefathers.

With so many possibilities, Thanksgiving really should get more decorative attention.  Thanksgiving reminds us of family, friends, and food, and the memories that combination can make also serve as great ideas.  A few examples:

• 
  

  Norman Rockwell’s ‘Thanksgiving’ painting of the family seated at the table in the foreground as the grandmother presents the golden turkey and the grandfather prepares to lead grace is a true American icon.  Why not re-enact the painting with your own family?  A white table cloth, an oven-roasted turkey, and enough people are all you need.  A photograph like that would be not only a one of a kind Thanksgiving decoration but a treasured family photograph.

• 
  

  Another family picture idea: dress up as pilgrims.  Costumes are available or easy to make if you’re a bit crafty with a sewing machine and a glue gun.  It’s something that will make a great memory year after year.

• 
  

  Football season – and football weather – is another great idea to explore.  Some families play touch football before Thanksgiving dinner – to work up an appetite – or afterward – to work off the pumpkin pie.  A photo of your family scrambling around in the fall leaves would make a beautiful printed canvas; even better if you have family team jerseys.  If your clan is more the ‘weekend warrior’ and ‘armchair quarterback’ type, snap of shot of everyone on the couch in the living room watching the game.

Once you have the digital photos you want to transfer to canvas, send them to Canvas Press and we’ll take care of it from there.  Your holiday printed canvases will be not only beautiful, but durable and easy to care for.  Gallery wrapped canvases need no frame, so there is no glass that might break while hanging or storing.  While the quality of your printed canvas will be such that you may want to display it all year, if you do want to use it just for seasonal decoration, just keep it in a cool, dry place where it’s safe from moisture.  When you bring it out for the holidays, your stretched canvas will need only a light dusting – if that – and it’s ready to hang.

If you want to know more or get some guidance on a project, visit www.canvaspress.com and let us show you how Canvas Press can make your holidays brighter.  Email us at the website or call (888) 784-5553 and we’ll be glad to help.

-Karen from Canvas Press

When you’re planning a pet photo for printing on canvas, you’re going to want to make it a special photo. Standard portraits of your dog sitting or even striking a show ring pose will certainly emphasize your dog’s beauty and are a great choice. For many dog owners, though, it’s their pooches personalities that they really want to shine through in a portrait, and less formal poses might be more appropriate for that. Something that can really add to a great portrait of your dog is a costume.

That may sound odd at first, but one of the many joys of having dogs is the fact that they will generally allow you to dress them up in silly costumes. Also, unlike many other pets, e.g. cats, rabbits, and iguanas, to name only a few, dogs actually seem to enjoy playing dress up. Well, some of them enjoy it. Some dogs just put up with it because they know it makes us happy, which is yet another wonderful thing about the canine species. In any case, dogs and costumes just seem to go together the same way kids and costumes do, and when you think of kids and costumes, it’s only natural to think of Halloween.

A Halloween portrait of your dog is a great choice for printing to canvas. If you have children, you can get them in on the act as well, but it’s fine even if your pup is your only ‘kid’. Pictures of dogs in Halloween costumes are almost as common as those of costumed children and a lot of work and creativity can go into these. My friend Bonnie had a Cairn terrier, and what costume idea could be better for a Cairn terrier than Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’? Bonnie even made her pup tiny red-sequined ‘ruby slippers’ for her paws. ‘Dorothy’ looked kind of lonely, though, so she asked a couple of other dog-owning friends over and before long, ‘Dorothy’ had been joined by a Chow mix ‘Cowardly Lion’, an Airedale ‘Tin Man’ in aluminum foil leggings and a funnel cap, a friendly mutt of a ‘Scarecrow’ and one pug in a Flying Monkey outfit. Once they got everyone settled down, it made a delightful – and very funny – picture. Definitely something worth going up on a wall.

Dog costumes are all the rage and can be bought at most pet stores. Clown costumes are always a hit, especially since most dogs are natural comics, and it’s rare not to see at least one English Bulldog in a pink tutu for Halloween. While you can spend a lot of money on the perfect dog costume, if you’re the least bit creative you can make your own. Ingenuity and a great idea can go a long way in costuming. Witness the Dalmatian I saw at a Halloween dog parade whose owner had turned her into a milk cow with a set of cardboard horns and an ‘udder’ made of pink balloons. One the other end of the scale was a five year old girl in riding togs – jodphurs, boots and jacket, the whole works – leading her ‘steed’: a spotted Great Dane in a saddle and bridle. Now that, I thought, would have made a perfect send-up of the classic ‘equestrian portrait’.

Planning a Halloween portrait of your dog is great fun. If your pooch is on board with wearing a costume, you’re only limited by your imagination. While we can’t dress up your dog for you, if you need help with ideas for your project just call us at (888) 784-5553 or email us from our website www.canvaspress.com and we’ll be glad to help.

-Karen

Many at home all-in-one printers have great scanning capabilities, so you may be able to scan your own prints in order to send them to us for printing on canvas. However, not just any scan will do. It is important to make sure the settings are correct to ensure a quality digital copy of your original.

Depending on how large the print is and how large you want to go you will need to adjust the resolution (DPI or PPI) setting to a higher number, the default is typically 200. It is ideal to scan at a resolution of between 800 and 2400 dpi. You will also want to select the area just around the image, so that the scanner surface is not included.

Some brands of scanners include software to remove dust and scratches automatically, and this can work great but it can also create some strange effects on the digital file. You can choose to scan without that adjustment if you aren’t happy with the results and select “Minor Retouching” on your order and we will be sure to touch up all those flaws.

Finally, make sure to save as a high quality file. JPEG is fine but make sure it is the Maximum Quality level to avoid compression artifacts and pixilation. Our website can accept files up to 100MB in size in .JPG, .PNG and .PSD file formats.

If you don’t have access to a scanner or you aren’t confident in getting a high quality scan from your equipment feel free to mail it to us for complementary scanning and we will return the original with your finished canvas. We recommend securing the photo inside a plastic bag between two pieces of cardboard and mailing using a service that provides you with a tracking number to make sure it does not get lost in the mail. If the print is a unique, one of a kind photograph and you are uncomfortable mailing it, or if it is larger than a letter size sheet of paper you can take it to a local print shop and request a high resolution scan.

One of you recently posted a comment on our blog asking,

Is there any way I can save pictures taken out of focus on my d60 Nikon?

Those nifty crime shows have led us to believe any blurry image can be made sharp with the right computer software. While this is not true, you can use Adobe Photoshop to add a small amount of sharpening.

Filter< Sharpen< Unsharpen Mask

Sharpening more than 150% at a radius of 1 will cause your images to look grainy and computer generated.

Tips for Preventing Blurry Snapshots

1. The lens on Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras should be set to auto instead of manual focus.
2. Take multiple shots. 9 times out of 10 you will have one print that is not blurry in the bunch.
3. Find a source of stabilization such as a tripod or fence.
4. Take a step back. It is hard for your camera to focus if you are extremely close to the subject.
5. Point-and-shoot cameras usually have face detection software therefore you do not need to adjust your camera settings.
6. When using an SLR try manually selecting your focal point.  This allows you to control your focus.

Learn a few tips to getting great photos of your favorite subjects. Kids and pets, I think is safe to say are the most photographed subjects. Both hold a special place in our hearts, and they are always just so darned cute! There are a few things you can do to make the pictures of your children and pets turn out amazing.

Easily enough, most of the tricks to get better pictures will work on both kids and pets. Squeaky toys, favorite snacks and shiny objects are great for getting attention with small children and animals. I mean that in all seriousness, no offense intended. If you have someone to help you, have them try to get the subject’s attention while you frame your shot.
(more…)

You’re sure you haven’t done anything wrong, but you don’t know whose side the law is on. Fret no more. If you are planning having that image put on canvas, check out these ten rules to see whether or not your image is a legal concern.

read more | digg story

Storage ideas to organize your digital and print images and negatives so they will last a lifetime.

Since digital photography has only become popular within the last decade, you probably have boxes of old prints and negatives shoved in the back of a closet somewhere. You also may have a lot of camera equipment if you are a hobby photographer, and maybe you have even started collecting some antique or unique cameras and photo gear.

We’ve talked before about photo organization, as it pertains to organizing your digital files on the computer. Now that it is the beginning of a new year, let’s talk about organizing the rest of your life as it pertains to photography.
(more…)

It’s a pretty safe assumption that most of you have a digital camera of some sort. With all the features and options available on a digital camera, sometimes it can get confusing as to how to create a decent picture. And many of us don’t have the equipment or extra hands to replicate the kinds of portraits that come out of a professional studio. So as a regular parent, friend, or budding photographer, how can we make portraits that stand out from the regular snapshots? I’m going to take you step by step on how to make great photos with just the camera in your pocket.

The first aspect of a good portrait is the time of day. Evenings are the best for taking portraits because of the lack of direct sunlight, which can cause harsh shadows and high contrast on your subject. But we can’t always pick the time of day for pictures, so what next? Well, if you find yourself working in broad daylight conditions, the next best thing is to put your subject’s back to the sun. This prevents squinting, and overly-bright light on your subjects features.
(more…)