Choosing Canvas Art Colour: It's In Our DNA!

We don't mean to be rude, but you are a primate. So are we, and it's very useful for choosing the colour of your canvas art!



One benefit of being an higher ape, apart from being (in most cases) highly intelligent, is that we are very sensitive to subtle differences in colour. Specifically, we have trichromatic colour vision, which enables us to distinguish red from green. Very useful if you're deciding between our Valencia I and Valencia II canvas prints, for example! It also means we're really good at picking between subtle reds and oranges.

The reasons for this speciality are still debated amongst biologists. It was long held that this enabled us to tell the difference between ripe and unripe fruit. Now, it has been found this type of vision also enables us to easily detect blushing and fear in the faces of mates and rivals. However, there may be an alternative...

Let us throw the Canvas Republic hat into the ring here and posit a third theory. Choosing the correct canvas art in the perfect colour is a strong, primal urge amongst modern humans. The desire to choose a beautiful stretched canvas print, in a stunning colour that coordinates perfectly with an interior is a powerful and instinctive drive.

We speculate that our subtle colour vision evolved much more recently than scientists think, probably since Canvas Republic have been creating vibrant and stylish canvas art.

This trait has enabled humans to better style their homes with impressive canvas prints. A home adorned with amazing artwork is a sure sign to rivals and mates alike that its owner is a prosperous, powerful and ferile individual, with exceptionally appealing genes!

So you heard it here first. Humans have recently evolved to appreciate the subtle toning of our exclusive range of canvas art! Why not get ahead of the competition and choose your own custom colour scheme? Most of our designs can be recoloured to your own colours, and we can help you pick if you're unsure. Email us for more details.

As for the theory, we won't hold our breath for a Nobel prize...

Our Secrets Revealed: Why Our Prices Are Still The Lowest!

We're often asked why we're so much cheaper than practically all the other canvas art companies in the UK. On our Live Chat service, for example, people regularly query the price of our large canvas prints and three part sets particularly, and wonder if there's anything inferior about the quality. The answer is always a resounding "No!"

We decided to write this article to reveal some of the reasons that we're able to offer such great quality canvasses whilst keeping prices down.

As part of our own product development, we regularly research the prices and materials used by other companies to make their canvasses. This includes the odd anonymous sample, of course! We find this is the best way to cut through the hype and misinformation that unfortunately still plagues the market.

We see lots of canvas art websites using tacky, fear-based marketing. We're sure you've seen them too:

"Make sure you don't buy from them, they print with ink that evapourates when you look at it!"

or

"Make sure you don't get a canvas from X, they don't use our patented magic varnish that protects your canvas from evil for XXXX years..."

It's disappointing to still see this sort of thing because it creates a general mistrust of everybody, and is often used simply to justify exorbitant prices.

As our customers know, we hate this approach, and prefer to offer full information about our products and how they are made on the website. The quality and construction of our pieces is well documented with the information and articles we provide on this news page, as well as our Quality Guide and Quick Guide. This allows anyone to make an informed choice for themselves, without being badgered into (or out of) anything.

We know. You're probably now thinking "this is all very well, but you promised secrets!" Well, there are a number of reasons why we are able to offer such high quality canvas prints at our trademark low prices...

Perhaps the main reason is our established infrastructure. Since our inception, we’ve grown steadily and now we work from our 5500 sq ft. facility in Leicester. This space allows our team to create more pieces each day whilst better organisation and efficiency leads to higher quality standards.

This growth also allows us to buy in more materials such as canvas and frames, and this buying power allows us to negotiate lower costs. We import directly from the best manufacturers so that we don’t have to rely on the stocks of UK suppliers. Passing these savings onto our customers benefits everybody in the long run.

With the odd exception, all our artwork is designed in-house, so we don’t have to include hefty artist royalties in the final price. Whilst our designs are exclusive and you won’t find them anywhere else, we don’t believe in charging a gallery price tag. Some may charge more for limited editions, but we’re not convinced that this increases value.

So now you know! We’re confident that Canvas Republic make the best quality, best value canvas prints available, so why not see our online shop for more details?

All You Need to Know About Sending Us Photos

As you can imagine, we're sent lots of photos every day and we're used to working with a range of images. Because of this, we are sometimes a little guilty of taking for granted that our customers know exactly what and how to send files to us!

One of the main concerns our customers have is whether their image is of sufficient quality to make a good canvas print. The image files we receive come from many sources, including digital cameras of all types and scans, and so vary in quality enormously.

Generally the larger the image, the better the print. Most images from digital cameras are much smaller in size than the canvas print they will be made into.

Unfortunately, judging whether an image will make a good quality print at a certain size is not as simple as just checking the file size. Many factors in how the image was created and how it was subsequently saved affect the overall quality and suitability for printing...

File Type: The format in which the file is saved. Formats such as JPEG use compression, which is a method for making the file smaller and easier to send.

Compression: The greater the compression used, the lower quality the image. Some types of compression give better results than others. High compression is easily recognised as blocky "artifacts", especially at the edges of detail in the picture.

Resolution: The total area or pixel size of an image can be expressed in a number of ways. You may see images referred to in sizes such as 1280 x 1024, which is the height x length in pixels. Size can also be measured in real world units such as inches or centimetres.

DPI: Dots Per Inch is linked to the image size. It refers to how much detail is saved per square inch of image. 72dpi is the standard for images that should look good on a monitor or the web. However, a 6 x 4" image will print smaller than this at 72dpi. Therefore, the standard DPI for printing at full size is 300dpi.

Interpolation: As most photos aren't as large as the desired print size, or at 300dpi, they must be enlarged. Digital enlargement requires the computer to stretch the pixels in the image apart, and then fill in the gaps with 'guessed' pixels.

Most popular graphics software is capable of interpolation, although most give unsatisfactory results at anything other than minor enlargements. This is because of the quality of the guesswork when filling in the extra detail depends on the quality of the interpolation software.

Imagine taking a photo of a book from a foot away. The book would fill the frame and even with a modest camera, you would be able to read the pages of the book. Now imagine taking another photo of the book from 20 feet away. The book would now be a tiny part of the photo and you wouldn't be able to read the words.

A piece of software like Photoshop could stretch the blurry, tiny book so it was the same size as in the first photo. However, it would have to make an approximation of what the words should be, which wouldn't be as accurate as taking a nearer photo.

This is why we ask our customers to leave any enlargements to us, rather than use software like Photoshop to artificially enlarge the image to a bigger size. We use specialist interpolation software to obtain the optimal result possible from the original image.

To complicate these quality issues even further, many popular photo album and email programs apply their own compression to images, reducing them in size and quality for easy sending.

As a quick rule of thumb, images over 1mb in size should give a good quality print at most canvas sizes. However, for a more accurate assessment, you can always send us your image so we can let you know whether it will be work as a Photo On Canvas...

Seen Our Square Canvasses?

Rectangular artwork, whether it is displayed portrait (tall) or landscape (wide), is an eminently popular format. It's great for large living room walls, and to make a centre-piece above a sofa or bed.

But have you considered a square piece? Square format canvas art has a symmetry in both directions, allowing for some creative display options on the wall. Many of our abstract square canvasses can be orientated in different ways and combined with each other with spectacular results.

We have chosen coordinating two-tone colour schemes and designs, so you really can mix and match them easily.

Why not try hanging two or three in a vertical line in a hallway, or a block of four to make a larger square in a kitchen area? The possibilities really are endless when you consider that we can also redesign any of our other canvas art into squares, even with your own custom colours...

Please see our square range for more details...