Canvas prints are stretched over a wooden frame, which means the edges of your image wrap around the sides and become invisible from the front. Planning for that is most of the job.

Wrap Allowance

The frame depth determines how much is lost:

  • Slim frame (~2 cm deep): about 2.5–3 cm of image on each side.
  • Standard gallery wrap (~4 cm deep): about 4–5 cm on each side, including the fold-over to the back.

That's potentially 10 cm off the width of your composition. Three ways to handle it:

  1. Design with a margin. Keep all important content — faces, horizons, text — well inside the visible front area. Aim for at least 6 cm of unimportant space around the edges.
  2. Mirrored wrap. The printer mirrors the outer strip of your image onto the sides, so nothing is truly lost from the front face. The most popular option for photos that are already tightly composed.
  3. Solid colour wrap. The sides are a flat colour sampled from the image. Clean and gallery-like, and it costs you nothing from the composition.

Ask which the printer offers before you crop.

Resolution

Canvas is textured and viewed from a distance, so it's forgiving:

  • 150 DPI at final size is generally sufficient; some printers accept 100 DPI for very large pieces.
  • A 60 × 40 cm canvas at 150 DPI needs about 3543 × 2362 px.
  • Add the wrap allowance to the pixel calculation: you're printing a larger area than the visible face.

Because the canvas weave physically diffuses fine detail, a slightly soft photo often looks *better* on canvas than on glossy paper — the texture hides what gloss would reveal.

Which Photos Work on Canvas

  • Work well: landscapes, portraits with soft backgrounds, painterly images, black and white, anything with bold shapes and strong colour.
  • Work poorly: images with fine text, screenshots, dense detail, and photos with heavy noise — canvas texture plus noise looks muddy.
  • Consider contrast: canvas has a narrower dynamic range than glossy paper. Deep shadows lose separation, so lift them slightly before printing.
  • Saturation drops a little on matte canvas; a small boost before printing compensates.

Preparation Steps

  1. Choose the final size and wrap type.
  2. Crop to the aspect ratio of the canvas, keeping content away from the edges.
  3. Check resolution at 150 DPI including the wrap area; downscale if larger, but never upscale aggressively.
  4. Lift shadows slightly, add a touch of contrast and saturation, and consider a mild sharpening pass since canvas softens detail.
  5. Export as high-quality JPEG or TIFF in the printer's requested colour profile — many want sRGB, some want Adobe RGB.

Order the smallest size first if you're unsure. Canvas colour rendering differs enough from your screen that one test print teaches you more than any amount of soft-proofing.