Make your art available for purchase in poster format.
With a multitude of online opportunities to and sell their work, artists have seized the opportunity to turn their paintings into purchasable, shippable items for customers and fans. Knowing photograph and market your work for public purchase is a valuable step for any artist working to establish economic success.
Instructions
Photographing Your Work
1. Photograph your work in natural or indirect light. Do not use a flash, and try to shoot when the weather is overcast or hazy day.
2. Clear your memory card and set your camera's resolution to the highest setting.
3. Mount your painting flat on a wall and secure your camera on the tripod directly in front of the painting. Place it at a distance that allows the painting to fill thee view lens, without cropping the image. Square the sides of the painting to the view lens. The height of the camera on the tripod should be level with the center of the painting.
4. Take several high resolution photos of your painting, and bracket the exposures. Take a few photos at various shutter speeds to allow for the best exposure. Taking several photos so you have multiple options when choosing the image you want to reproduce.
Preparing Your Image for Print
5. Load your photos onto your computer. Then upload your favorite image into your photo editing program.
6. Crop your image to include only your painted artwork. Rotate the canvas by degrees, if necessary, to set the image straight.
7. Adjust the sharpness, the color balance, and the contrast of your image to your preference.
8. Save your file in the largest format possible to allow for the optimum amount of pixel information. Save your file in a format supported by your large format printer. JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs or TIFFs are supported on sites such as Zazzle.com.
Print Your Posters
9. Upload your saved file to your printer's website. If you are working with a local printer, save your file to disk.
10. Choose the print medium for your posters. Mediums for poster printing can include satin paper, gloss paper, matte paper or cardstock. Some large format printers offer gicl e or canvas prints, however, these are more expensive than poster paper.
11. Choose the size for your poster. Standard poster sizes range from 11" x 17" to 27" x 39". Online printers may provide a screen to drop, drag and crop your image to specified print sizes. Local printers will give you a list of standard print sizes, and you can choose to crop the image yourself beforehand, or have them crop it for you.
12. Request a proof of your poster if possible. Print colors can vary greatly from screen to machine. If a proof is not customary for your printer, order one print and make adjustments to color and size if necessary before you make an order for several copies.
