Canvas sizing guide

In this post, we'll show you how to go about sizing your images for a canvas using Photoshop. The version we're using is CS4 but this guide will apply to pretty much all versions of Photoshop and similar software.

First, we'll create a new document. We're going to make a 20"x16" canvas so make sure you have your units set to inches and enter this in the boxes as shown, making sure the resolution's set to 300.

Ensuring that you've got the grid turned on will make sizing and previewing your canvas much easier. In our preferences we have a gridline set at every inch.

The size we currently have on screen is going to be the face of our canvas, so we need to increase the dimensions to account for the borders. All our canvas stretchers are 1.5" thick, so we'll need to add that to our existing canvas size, increasing it to 19"x23".

Using rulers, we can show where the borders of our canvas are going to be. To do this, just click on the guides as pictured above and drag your rulers so they're 1.5" in from the edge.

Now we're ready to place our image. Just select 'Place' from the file menu then navigate to the file on your computer. You'll most likely need to resize your image so enlarge the image to fill the whole of the document, making sure you hold down the shift key to preserve the aspect ratio. Using our rulers as a guide, you'll now be able to crop the image as you like and see exactly where is going to be wrapped round the edge. We've darkened the borders in the image below to clearly illustrate the wrap.

And that's it! Now all that's left is to save your file and you're ready to order. We'll be making all our templates available to download soon and you can always get in touch if you need help with anything!