Services

Have a nice image on your cell phone you don't know what to do with? If you have your own picture you would like to display, send it to us. Although we cater to people who take lots of pictures and don't know how to get them out of the camera, our biggest customers include fellow professional photographers. We will take the same care processing your images as we do our own.

Send Us Your Picture

Email your digital file to us. If all you have is a print or negative, you could mail it to us, but you might sleep better if you took it to a local photographic services company to have it scanned with a high-quality scanner while you wait, and then just send us the digital file. If given the choice, we would prefer raw files, but that is not always an option. JPEG is a universal picture format, and is perfectly fine. TIFF files, PDF files, and other picture formats are also acceptable. If you have questions about a file's acceptability, just send it and let us figure it out. Do not make the file smaller to fit through the mail. If your file really is too large for your e-mail system I already have other options; call us.

Post-Processing Or Editing Your Images

Unlike what many people think, what you see is not what you get with your digital (or even film) equipment^Article. We can digitally enhance or restore the image, print it, and/or frame to your specifications. Enhancements include adjusting color, contrast, saturation, sharpening and/or noise reduction, cropping, and even removing dust, scratches, and ex-boyfriends. We can also add megapixels to make better enlargements. We will e-mail you a lower-resolution screen version of the improved file for your approval. If we have a cropping suggestion for better composition, or we weren't sure how dramatic the sunset really was (or how dramatic you wanted it to be), we might send more than one version. We will also tell you realisticly how large we can make it without losing quality. Among other factors, like number of pixels and original sharpness, for some strange reason it also depends on whether you want it printed on paper or canvas (you can go larger on canvas). At this point there is no cost or obligation. If you are comfortable doing your own editing, that's fine too; just let us know we can skip this step. In either case, send a message telling us how you want it printed. If you do send your original print or negative, it will be returned to you virtually untouched.

Another thing we can do for you is add a title or inspirational quote or other text, and even your signature to your image at any size or color. You would not be restricted to Nancy's current technique and philosophy for printing your signature and text. Just let us know what you have in mind.

Printing

We print on an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 printer using Epson UltraChrome HDR inks (it has eleven ink cartridges and can print on media that is 44" wide). We currently print on fine art and photo papers with a glossy, luster, metallic, or matte finish. We can also print directly on canvas. (For more information about our media options, see Media Choices.) Each of these media has its own color gamut, meaning that the image may look a little different on each medium. If you calibrate your monitor and are familiar with color management, we can send you profiles for the particular paper you are interested in and take other steps to minimize the unpleasant surprises you may have experienced with other printing services.

Finishing - Unframed

After we print the image, we can send it to you in a number of formats. These options are generally available for images printed on paper only; not canvas.

None - just printed

After drying for at least 24 hours, we can just mail it to you. You may finish it however you please. Just tell us if you need it to be borderless. When we do the matting, we find that a border is better because the paper needs to be marginally larger than the hole in the mat to keep from falling through under certain circumstances, but most of that margin could be blank paper instead of wasting part of the image. If you are planning on using a standard-sized mat, you can let us know and we can adjust the size of the picture.

Mounted

We can attach a 3/16" acid-free white foam board to the back of your picture. Mounting is not a prerequisite for framing; it is an alternative. For this option the image is usually borderless.

Matted (Matboard defined)

We can cut mats and attach your picture to them so you can frame them. We would also supply a 3/16" acid-free white foamboard as a backing board with the same outer dimensions. We highly recommend using mats if you are framing your picture for two reasons:

• physically, the mats keep your image away from the glass of the frame, which will extend the life of the print.
• aesthetically, it separates your image from the surroundings to help direct the viewers focus.

Judges at photography competitions often caution participants that the mat should not compete with the picture for one's attention. Carrying this to the extreme, some of them suggest only a single black mat. It is possible, however, that the right color(s) could actually enhance the picture by highlighting important features or the general mood of the image.

Possible matting embellishments include V-grooves and stepped corners. Embellishments would add $1.50 per cut set-up.

If you choose this option, we will select an outer mat size to fit a standard sized frame, and may even crop the image to better conform to that aspect ratio. When matting pictures, we leave a paper margin around the print, instead of making it borderless, so that we can make the mat overlap smaller and leave more picture exposed. Standard mats use a 1/4" overlap, so the hole for an 11" by 14" picture would be 10¹/₂" by 13¹/₂". Our overlaps are usually 1/8", but have been as low as 1/16".

Conventional Framing

We cut our own mats and glass, and make our own frames from various types of moulding. For all framed prints, hanging hardware is included.

For our own work, we tend to use simple frames (check out our Samples page). To see some of our more unique projects, go to Making A Picture Frame From Dilapidated Fence Pickets, Using Multiple Moulding Widths In One Frame, Fort Myers Beach Fishing Pier #3 (to see a trapezoidal stretcher frame with beveled edges), or Our Latest Framing Project (for printing on mats & curved mat openings).

Different techniques are used to frame canvas than the many types of photo paper. For canvas, see the next section.

Mat (defined)

We use either Crescent of Bainbridge mats, which both have decorative and conservation collections. The decorative collections have a larger selection of colors and are more economical, but the conservation series protects the image from long-term damage. The price quoted on our price list includes only a single non-conservation mat of any color, without embellishment. The options discussed at matting embellishments would cost extra.

Glass

For glass, we have used Tru Vue Premium Clear Glass (regular), Reflection Control (non-glare), and Conservation Reflection Control Glass, but other options include Museum Glass and clear acrylic (regular or non-glare). Our listed prices are for non-glare. Most of the other options would be more expensive.

Moulding (defined)

Our Moulding Options page shows some of the frame moulding options available at no extra cost. We will charge extra for larger or fancier frames, however. if you have a particular moulding in mind, but you don't see it here, just send us a close-up picture and tell us the width, and we will try to find it for you.  We have actually created our own 'moulding' for a specialty frame^Details, so if you have any ideas, we can talk.

Acrylic-Mounted

This is our newest format. We print the image on metallic paper or glossy paper and then have it sent out to be mounted behind a sheet of acrylic. The acrylic can be either regular (with glare) or non-glare. For more information, see our blog.

Canvas

People look at some of our images on canvas and think they are paintings. After printing and drying, two coats of glossy PremierArt Eco PrintShield and a final satin coat are added to protect against abrasion, moisture, ozone, ultraviolet light and other environmental contaminants. Again after drying, the canvas is then stretched over a frame. We can use either a 3/4" or a 1¹/₂" thick frame. For images up to around 14" by 19" we usually use the 3/4" frame, using the 1¹/₂" frame for larger prints, but can use either moulding for any size print. We use stainless steel staples when stretching the canvas. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find stainless steel wire or strap hangers, but at least these can be unscrewed and replaced as necessary.

We gallery-wrap our canvas prints. There are a number of ways we can treat the picture edges of gallery-wrapped images (all of which would be the same price).

• The simplest way would be to just wrap the image around the edge like wrapping paper. This is called an Image wrap. If an important part of your subject is too close to the edge of the image, that part could then be on the side of the frame.
• The next easiest method would be to have a colored border, sometimes called a color wrap. You could pick a color from the picture itself, from the surrounding room in your house, or make up your own color.
• The most common option among other framers appears to be a "mirror" wrap, in which the regular picture ends at the front edges, and for the sides the image is flipped or reversed, starting at the same edge. Although we're not sure why anybody would want to do that, we could do the same thing. Here is a link to an explanation of mirror wraps by a company that uses this technique. They briefly discuss the second reason I don't like it. Then they discuss another (unpublished) option, which uses what Photoshop calls Content-aware fill. Although we have no intention of advertising it either, we could also do that, and I would prefer that over a mirror wrap.
• For Nancy's images, we crop the image a tad larger so up to 1/2" would wrap around the edge. Then we digitally stretch that wrapped section to cover the whole side of the frame^How. This might be referred to as a "digital stretched wrap". At some angle of view, it actually creates an optical illusion, appearing to be a continuation of the front image^Math. We would be happy to do that for you.

Our newest variation to our digitally-stretched gallery wraps is the beveled edges^Announced. All of our new canvas images will be printed this way, but for your image, you need to specify. It makes the sides more visible and takes that illusion angle to the next level^How.

• We've seen only one other photographer that does anything like our technique, but he carries it to the extreme, stretching the edge pixel all the way across the edge of the frame. It is an interesting effect. We could do that for you also.

For all canvas prints, hanging hardware is included.