Hey Folks,

I purchased an Epson 4900 a few weeks ago (from our friends at Hunts). I started playing with canvas wraps and printed my first 16x24 inch gallery wrap that is 'good enough to hang.' I am giving to my friends, Jeff and Heather, as a present for their recent wedding.

It took three tries, and about 10 feet of paper, but I finally nailed it. The wrapping process is much harder than it looks - and it took a bit to really get into a groove. It is my hope that I can use this as a means of making prints for the Westminster Dog Show this year as a means of decreasing my 'entrance costs.' By making my own wrap, I figure I spent about 15 or 20 bucks (after the 3 prints went down the toilet) in order to make this wrap. I figure I can knock it down to about 10 with redundancy. That is pretty awesome - and something I am excited about. It will lower the cost of a gallery wrap print by about $45 bucks per print. Consider I will probably have 10-15 prints at the dog show, that is a huge savings....

James

Wow. Sounds great. I can't even get a standard ink jet print to go the way I want, so I gave up on self printing long ago!

Congratulations James. Did you use a photoshop plug-in or some other graphics editor for the print?

Jim

Hey Jim (and Jim),

I am really pleased. Of course, I mucked up the image last night by spraying it with acrylic and doing a really crappy job of it. So, tonight when I get in I am going to have to re-frame it. YUCK.

James

"Congratulations James. Did you use a photoshop plug-in or some other graphics editor for the print?"

Hey Jim,

Not sure if I understand exactly the question. I processed it like any other image - Capture One for the raw file and Photoshop at 16x24 (with a 1 inch black border canvas size).

James

James:

Before I run the risk of sticking my foot in my mouth, please understand that I have never done a gallery wrap in my life . . . unless you count the time I could not afford anything to hang on the bare walls of my army-issue government quarters. I found cheap cotton fabric remnants with interesting patterns and colors, built frames, stretched the fabric tight and fastened in the back, then hung them on the wall like pictures.

In any event, my understanding is that when you do a gallery wrap, there are several things you can do vis-à-vis the edges:

1. You can let the image wrap around the edges and to the back. In that case, you would loose part of the image which may or may not matter. As long as the subject is sized and positioned correctly, this would seem to be the easiest. But,

2. If the composition of the photo makes this impractical, you could create a shadow or border around the image to cover sides of the frame. That's what you did. Depending on the image, this might not be the most aesthetically pleasing.

or,

3. You could mirror the outside edges of the image so you didn't lose any detail from the shot. I would think, depending on the image,this might be more aesthetically pleasing than No. 2.

There are Photoshop plug-ins available to help with the task. (e.g., http://ultra-canvas.com/photoshop-plugin/en/home.html) I thought they could be especially helpful with No.'s 2 & 3, but I imagine if cropping is involved, even if you are doing No. 1, it might help with setting up the printer. I've never used them, but thought maybe they might help cut down on trial & error waste.

Here's a couple more links similar programs:

http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/gallery-wrap-panel.aspx

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tools/plugins/perfect-resize-plugin-genuine-fractals.html

Jim

LOL, Jim, you have taught me much! No need to worry about sticking your foot in your mouth. I just wanted to clarify because I did not understand the question. Essentially, I created 'black space' around the image so that I would be able to wrap it relatively seamlessly and not lose much of the foreground.

The problem with the wrapping had mostly to do with the Epson's sizing. The 4900 prints only 17 inch wide paper. This means that 16 inch frame bars are not OK because no one makes anything less than .75 inch bars (meaning the paper to full wrap around it would need to be about 18 inches wide, not 17). This means that the final image out put is not quite 2x3 ratio.

I wound up using 15 inch wood bars on the vertical and standard 24 inch pars on the horizontal. I made the final output print 17x25.5 to give me enough room to wrap around the 15x24 inch wood frame's .75 inch width.

I just finished re-wrapping the image as a result of my 'gloss failure' earlier. I hate to say it, but the spray is a real pain in the butt to put on properly and in the future I will not bother with it. It is a pity because I would really like to protect the image a bit better. The one problem with the canvas is that the black inks do not perfectly dry and come off with any minor print touching. I used rubber gloves in order to do the wrapping - and it made for hot work.

James