Create an ancestral gallery with canvas art

Basis für eine Ahnengalerie sind alte Familienbilder, die oft als kleine schwarz-weiß Fotos vorliegen. Da Künstler üblicherweise farbige Bilder anfertigen, müssen Sie einige Vorarbeit leisten, um authentische "Gemälde" auf Leinwand drucken zu lassen.

An ancestral gallery is based on old family photos, which are often available as small black and white photos. Since artists usually produce colored pictures, you have to do some preliminary work in order to have authentic "paintings" printed on canvas.

Tip: Photographers usually have the option of enlarging smaller images analogously.

Now colour the picture using a photo editing program. This takes some practice and at first you will encounter some failures.

Notes on printing analog images

Pay attention to the formats of old photo prints, because digital photography and photo printing work with different sizes than is usual with analog images.

Dimensions of analog images

Movie Size Negative Common image formats
35mm film 24x36mm 9x13 cm
Roll film 30x40mm
40x40mm
9x12cm
12x12cm
Full disk 165x216mm 16x21cm
Half Disk 114x140mm 11x14cm
Quarter Plate 70x83mm 7x8 cm

Photo printing dimensions

Description Size in cmv Hint
3 : 2 30x20 to 150x100 portraits; primarily memories such as ancestral gallery, wedding pictures
4 : 3 40x30 to 160x120 group pictures; mostly memories
Square 20x20 to 120x120 animal pictures, flowers, still lifes; are more room decorations than memories
frame format 50x40; 60x50; 70x50; 100x70; 100x80 animal pictures, flowers, still lifes; are more room decorations than memories
Panoramic 2:1 40x20 to 160x80 Landscape pictures: mainly serve as room decoration
Panoramic 3:1 60x20 to 150x50 Landscape pictures: mainly serve as room decoration
Panoramic 4:1 80x20 to 160x40 Landscape pictures: mainly serve as room decoration

As you can see, old photographs are often in formats that do not fit the technically possible sizes of prints. You must therefore crop the images.

Prepare analog image for canvas printing

Portrait format 3:2 is suitable for portraits. Suppose you have a photo that is 21 cm high and 16 cm wide. A possible print format is 40 by 35 cm. If you enlarge the image by a factor of 2.2, it measures 46.2 x 35.2 cm. So you need to cut about 6 cm in height. Make sure that the person depicted is in the middle of a 35 x 30 cm field.

The print on canvas is made on a special fabric stretched over a roller. The fabric is then stretched over a stretcher frame. For portraits, a border of about 2 cm should be uniformly designed in a neutral color. Due to the special printing process, the edge is also printed in this color. Stretcher frame and fabric give the pictures a noble appearance.

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