How to Print your Artwork on Canvas

Select your digital image to print. This can be a personal photo or stock image. It can just as well be an original painting or drawing as long as it has been scanned and resides on your computer’s hard drive. You can purchase the inkjet canvas sheets from office supply stores in 8 by 10 inch or 9 by 14 inch sizes. If you have a wide format printer (often prints up to 13 inches wide), then you can order larger canvas stock online. In any case, it will not work to use regular canvas sheets intended for oil painting.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Windows or Mac computer
• Draw or Paint program to print from
• Inkjet printer
• Canvas printing medium
• Digital Art to print

1. Select your artwork. The work should be of a subject and nature that it resembles an oil or acrylic painting (rather than watercolor). This is because paintings on canvas are usually of the thicker paint variety. The intention here is to have the resulting print look as though it had been painted by hand.

2. Bring the art into a program that will allow you to print (photo editing or draw programs are best. They include: Photoshop, CorelDraw, Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, Photopaint, or any application that shipped with your printer. In a pinch, you can use Windows Paint or Windows Photo Gallery. Word processing programs will also work, but the sizing of the output will be problematic.

3. If you are using a draw program such as Illustrator or CorelDraw, you can easily change the size of the output without changing the original image.

4. Select File>Print and then choose the inkjet printer you want to use from the dropdown.

5. Click on the Properties button and select the options desired. You will want to select the heavy or thick matte paper option and also select the high quality option. Also, choose the size of the canvas stock you are printing on from the size dropdown.

6. Select Print Preview from the dialog box. In Photoshop this is called Print with Preview on the File menu.

7. Click and drag your image to fit the paper size shown in the Print Preview window. Once you have the image nearly filling the paper, you are ready to print.

8. 
    
   Image Printed on Canvas

   Insert the canvas stock into the printer, adjusting the paper guides to fit the size and adjust the thickness lever to thickest paper. This is usually on the right side of the printer as you face it. Click the print button or dialog to go ahead and print.

Tips & Warnings

• You will likely have to click and drag your image to fit the paper in the Print Preview window if you are printing on paper larger than 8 by 10 inches. That is, unless your picture is very large and/or high resolution.
• Sometimes the printer's paper thickness gauge is represented by a zero for regular paper and a plus sign for thick.
• If your printer doesn’t have an adjustment for thick stock, you may have to tape masking tape or heavy duty packing tape along the feeder edge of the canvas. To do this, use a thin strip of tape the length of the paper width. Tape the bottom edge of the canvas ½ the width of the tape, and then wrap the tape to the back side of the canvas and seal. This way, the tape covers the entire edge of the canvas, on both sides.

[ResearchJunkie]

on 5/15/2009 I was looking for tips on how to get my artwork printed. Thanks for the advice!