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

Through the LifeWorks Home Improvement Challenge (HIC), corporate and community teams partner with a decorator to design the space of a LifeWorks client. LifeWorks clients live in Supportive Housing – a program offering subsidized housing to kids who need a “getting on your feet period.” LifeWorks clients are former foster care children, former homeless youth and teen parents who may have never before received the help they need for a fresh start.

November Design Group of Austin, Texas contacted us about working with them to create a special canvas artwork piece to be featured in the living room of the makeover apartment. The girl living there was not able to bring her cat there with her, so we made a beautiful sepia-toned 30×30 gallery wrap canvas of her cat so she would always be there with her.

For more information on LifeWorks and how you can get involved visit www.lifeworksweb.org

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.

Starting Monday August 3, we will begin accepting entries to our Summer Photo Contest. You can submit images of your best summer photos all week long until Friday, no entries will be considered if sent before August 3 or after August 7. Then, all the entries will be posted in a gallery on our Facebook Fan Page for voting from Monday, August 10 - Sunday, August 16. The winner will be the image with the most “likes” and that lucky photographer will win a 16×20 canvas gallery wrap of the photo!

• Images must be in .JPG format
• Each entrant may submit up to three (3) images
• Images should be of good resolution, but no more than 5MB in size
• Only images received between 12:00 am CST August 3, 2009 and 11:59 pm CST August 7, 2009 will be considered.

Instructions

Email images to info@canvaspress.com with the subject line”Photo Contest.” Include your name, location (city, state), phone number and a title or caption for the image.

You will receive a confirmation email within 12-16 hours of receipt that your photo has been entered. If you do not receive an email your attachment may not have been received, please try again or contact us for help.

If the winning canvas does not fit as a 16×20 gallery wrap, a canvas of equal or lesser value may be substituted.

The winner will be contacted immediately upon the contest closing time. If the prize is not claimed within 14 days, it will be given to the image with the next highest number of votes.

Canvas Press is hosting it’s first ever Photo Contest on our Facebook fan page. If you are on Facebook and are not a fan of Canvas Press, join today!

 We’re looking for your best summertime photo, whether it be a vacation shot, portraits, or just sweating in the summer sun! Entries will be posted on our fan page and voted on by our Facebook Fans. We will be accepting entries August 3rd through August 7th, so be thinking about what you want to submit!! One lucky winner will receive a fabulous prize.

 Once all entries are submitted, we will host your images on our Fan Page for voting. Whichever entry receives the most votes wins! (Only one entry per person, please!)

 So, let’s get out there and show us your best summertime image!

Diane, a local customer, brought in an antique family photo. The picture is the only remaining image of her great grandfather’s family and was in poor condition. Over the years it had faded and cracked, there were spots missing from the image and even ball point pen doodles all over, probably from a little child getting a hold of it at one time. We were able to scan and restore the photo and print a 14×11 canvas. Diane now has a copy that will last much longer than the original did, and since it is a digital copy all of the family members can have one too. Here are the before and after images.

If you have a photo in need of restoration or retouching please contact us for a consultation. Restoration work is charged at an hourly rate.

Earn money to use at Canvas Press by simply telling your friends about it.

This month we are spotlighting a new program at CanvasPress.com. We would like to introduce our referral program, where you can earn money simply by telling your friends about Canvas Press.

Have you ever bought a canvas print from us? Have any friends or relatives seen it and just raved over how neat it was? How many of those friends are there – 5, 10, 50? Now multiply those numbers by ten, and turn them into $$ quick and easy.
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Forget MEGApixels and start taking GIGApixel images with your digital camera. That’s right, with your tiny, point-and-shoot digital camera. New technology from Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Google and local Austin company, Charmed Labs now brings consumers the ability to create and share multibillion-pixel panoramas.

They are called “GigaPans.” Carnegie Mellon and Ames developed software that could digitally stitch together hundreds of overlapping images to create one large, extremely high resolution picture. Charmed Labs is an electronics company from Austin, Texas that has worked with Carnegie Mellon on past projects. For this endeavor, they were able to create a low-cost robotic device in which a point-and-shoot digital camera can be mounted to take the necessary pictures.
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We all remember from English class the rule of Subject — Verb Agreement, which means you wouldn’t say “That book are great…” but rather “That book is great.” The same rule can be applied to photography, if we look at how the subject of the photo relates to the framing of the picture, what I call Subject — Frame Agreement.

The most common incident where we find this error is in distance. Being too far away from the subject does not make a good photograph. This does not mean that every picture has to be a real close headshot, it just means you have to pay attention to the background. Usually it is nice to include some of the surroundings, to give the image context, but you have to make a conscious decision that the background you are including is important.
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