When Presto Photo got in contact with me asking if I was interested in reviewing one of their products my ears perked up. I noticed they offered a range of photo products including photobooks, wall art, calendars and so forth. I have yet to try my hand at printing wall art for the home so I was keen to check out their products and try out their online ordering system. This is my impressions and review of the their canvas print and ultra gloss metal print.
Disclaimer: Many thanks to Presto Photo for providing me both products as part of a collaboration. This review isn’t a sponsored post and all opinions are my own. This is intended to be my personal experience of their products and my thought process around how I approach printing my first wall art.
Presto Photo was found in 2005, so they’ve certainly been around the block! Starting off as a travel information company, they moved into printing photo books and then naturally moved into printing other photographic products such as wall art, calendars, cards and other photo gifts.
Selecting the product and images
Before deciding on what to wall art to print and the size of the wall art. I first thought about the space that I thought would suit having some prints on the wall. The entrance way was an obvious choice. I wanted there to be something impactful on the wall when we entered our home. As it was quite a large white wall, I decided to go with a relatively large landscape 30″ x 20″ ultra gloss metal print of the Perth city skyline. It’s a very classic shot, one that I took a couple of years ago and it’s still one of my favourite images.
For the second wall art, I was keen to see what a classic canvas print looked liked. I had a few location options that came to mind when I was thinking about the layout and wall spaces around the house. This included the hall way to the bedrooms, the stairwell and the shared home office. Ultimately I felt having a 16″x24″ vertical canvas print in the home office was the right choice as it was a space that we do spend a reasonable amount of time in in our day to day lives. For the canvas print I decided on something a bit more architectural to compliment the textured feel and matted look of a canvas print.
Melbourne city is one of our favourite cities to visit and has some sentimental meaning for us. I decided to print the famous Shot Tower in Melbourne Central. For those who are unfamiliar with Melbourne, the Shot Tower is located within a shopping central called Melbourne Central in Melbourne city itself. It used to be a bullet making factory back in the 1800s. It’s now heritage listed and is one of the most significant buildings from Australia’s industrial age.
For me and this particular project, I was keen to select photographs that I’ve taken myself that had some meaning to us. Picking iconic photos of Perth and Melbourne was a no brainer for me.
Ordering the products
I used Adobe Lightroom to manage my photo library. Once I’ve decided on the 2 photos I wanted to print. I exported it as a jpeg file to the highest photo quality and saved this on my laptop. I then created a Presto Photo account and selected the wall art I wanted to print. It literally takes you through the process step by step. The ordering process could not be simpler.
First you choose your project type (metal print, acrylic print, canvas print or faux canvas print). The website describes each print type in a lot of detail which will help you decide on the look you’re after. After choosing your project type, you select the size and orientation of your print, followed by the actual size of your print.
The final step is to upload your photo and drop your photo into the frame provided. Once you click on buy now it takes you to a 3D visualisation page where the photo is placed on the print product to allow you to better visualise what it will look like. This was really helpful as it also showed you the back of the product.
After that, it takes you through the usual online ordering process of popping in your personal details and giving you an estimate on the delivery time.
Presto Photo also offers Lightroom integration to provide you a seamless ordering process. This is currently only available for Mac users so it wasn’t something I personally used. Definitely worth checking out if you own a Mac.
Unboxing the prints & first impressions
The products arrived in two large rectangular boxes. The metal print was carefully bubble wrapped all around and the canvas print was placed in a clear plastic bag. In both cases the prints were fitted snuggly between high density foam stuck to a cardboard backing. When the prints were removed there was not a dent or scratch to be seen.
As it’s the first time I’ve ordered wall art I really have no pre-conceived idea of how it would look like in real life. I was pretty impressed. The colour reproduction for both the metal and canvas print was great from my perspective. It was true to the colours I had on the screen as far as I could tell.
I was pleased with my choices of print type for each of the image. I thought brick and the geometric shapes in the Melbourne Shot Tower image worked well with the texture of the canvas print. I thought the glossy finish of the ultra gloss metal print worked well with an iconic skyline of Perth City.
I’m pretty happy with how the prints looked on the walls where I originally designated the space for it. In vertical canvas print works really well in the space next to door and the walk-in wardrobe in the office.
The landscape print of Perth city next to the main door of the house works well as I like how it brings colour to an otherwise white space. The one thing to note if you’re going to order an ultra gloss metal print is that it’s very reflective and if you’re placing it near a window or door with a lot of reflected light, you’ll see the reflection on the print at certain angles. While it sounds like it’s stating the obvious, it’s just something to be mindful of.
Putting up the prints
Now this was something I did some googling into being a first-time wall art printer! I thought I share my experience around this. The advice I read is to ensure the centre of the print is 57 inches (~144cm) from the floor. This is generally the average sight line for a human.
Another tip for hanging prints. If you don’t want to drill or nail into the wall, use Command Hooks for hanging the prints. I used the canvas hanger for the canvas print and the universal picture metal hanger for the metal print. When you want to move the print to another location you can just take the hanger off the wall and buy new double sided command tape to place on the hanger.
The canvas has a mounting plate that you can screw onto the back of the canvas print and that can be hung on a nail on the wall. For the metal print it already comes with a built in mounting bracket that can be hung on a couple of nails on the wall. A single nail on the wall would have sufficed. However I decided to use two hooks to improve the stability of the print on the wall for my own peace of mind.
Costs
The canvas print came to AUD$67 and the metal print came to AUD$199. Given the quality and the finish of the prints I received I think it’s good value for money. I don’t have extensive experience with prints to know how that compares to a bespoke photographic printing service that you find locally that does fine art printing say. However I think for the every day photographer or person who has a keen interest in printing their own photos to decorate or showcase around the home, I think that it’s very accessible and strikes the right balance in terms of quality and costs.
Conclusion
I think I couldn’t have asked for an easier printing process that what I experienced through Presto Photo. The ease of ordering through the website, the quality of the print and the cost makes Presto Photo a worthy contender if you are looking for your next wall art project. The hardest part of the process is probably picking the photos you want to print from you many thousands of photos!
I hope you have found this insightful and may be it has inspired you to print your own wall art. Drop my a comment if you have any questions or comments about printing wall art or the process of ordering prints through Presto Photo.
Thanks for stopping by today and happy shooting!
Your friend Janice.
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