December 24, 2010 – Review: Fotomoto Canvas Print in Gallery Wrap
Final Verdict is 4 out of 5 stars ( ****)
by D. K. Sutton
I decided to place an order with Fotomoto for a canvas print of Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse At Dusk. I wanted to give Fotomoto’s order fulfillment and printing services a test drive. Before I begin the review of the canvas print I would like to provide a little information for those that are not familiar with Fotomoto, the company I chose for order fulfillment on Timid Sky.
Fotomoto provides total online order fulfillment services for photographers who run their own websites. With Fotomoto, photographers are able to spend time doing what they know best and love, taking photos, instead of taking time to process payments and handle printing. It also allows a greater range of products to be offered that simply wouldn’t be possible for most photographers.
Fotomoto offers Premium Prints with three different paper types to choose from Kodak ENDURA Lustre, Kodak ENDURA Glossy or Kodak ENDURA Metallic. They also offer Fine Art Prints that they state are museum quality ink prints on archival papers. You can choose from Enhanced Matte Poster, Premium Glossy Photo, Satin Lustre Photo, Elegance Watercolor or UltraSmooth Fine Art. The last of the print choices are Canvas Prints, which is what I ordered. With canvas prints you can choose from Gallery Wrap, Board Wrap or Board Mounted along with additional customization of each of those options. Specifically for Gallery Wrap (which is what I ordered) you can choose black or white wrapped edges, lustre or glossy finish and three hanging options, sawtooth, wire hanger or paper back (no hanger).
In addition to prints you can also order greeting cards, postcards or purchase photo downloads for use as wallpaper, on websites, magazines and more. It’s up to the photographer to choose the options he or she wants to have available on their website. The last options available are Sharing and eCards. These are free options. The Sharing option allows sharing of photos on various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The eCard option allows visitors to send free eCards to an email recipient with custom message. All of these options, Prints, Cards, Downloads, Share, eCard appear on a customizable toolbar that can show up above or below each photo. Visitors to the site simply click one of the options and a Fotomoto pop-up appears where the order fulfillment process begins.
The Review
I ordered the canvas print on 12/14/2010 and received it on 12/22/2010 which means it only took around a week to receive which I think is pretty fast for this type of service. This is a custom made product which includes a wood frame. I fully expected turnaround time to be over a week, maybe even two weeks. To receive it in about a week was impressive. It arrived in a large, flat box via USPS. The box was much larger than the size of the canvas print itself. You can see in the photo above how the print was suspended within the middle of this large box with cardboard flaps and plastic fasteners. The print itself was protected within a plastic bag and on top of the print (on the side of the box that opens) was a large cardboard insert that protects the print when you open the box with a sharp object which is a nice touch.
The canvas print I ordered was Gallery Wrap with white-wrap edges, lustre finish and wire hangers. Unfortunately the print I received had black-wrap edges instead of the white-wrap I ordered. I contacted Fotomoto support via email to let them know about this error and I told them I would accept the black-wrap edge as received but wanted to make sure that they were aware of the error in case something needs to be fixed within their ordering system. I received a response within a few hours stating they were very sorry for the mix up and that they were contacting the print lab to see where the error was made. I’ve been in touch with Fotomoto support a few times (related to technical issues on my website) and they are always easy to work with and quick to respond.
After unboxing the canvas print I inspected it thoroughly. I will admit I’m not much of an expert when it comes to this type of product but it has met or exceeded my expectations. The wood frame is thick and solid. The canvas is wrapped smoothly and is fastened securely. Even the wire hanger brackets are attached with two screws on each bracket which clearly is completely over engineered but I think it speaks to the quality of the product overall. The lustre finish does have a sheen which makes me wonder how shiny the glossy finish must be. I’m also impressed by the nice touch of adding felt pads on the two lower corners on the rear to help protect the wall and keep the print slightly off the wall which always helps canvas artwork to pop visually.
I think the best statement that can be made about a product is whether or not you would purchase it again and the answer in this case is yes. I definitely plan to order more prints of my photos via Fotomoto in the future. In addition to Canvas Prints I will also be trying out their Premium Prints as well as Fine Art Prints. I will definitely write up reviews of the different products I order from Fotomoto. The final verdict on this first product, the canvas print in gallery wrap is 4 out of 5 stars. That 1 missing star is mostly for the error made with regard to black-wrap instead of white-wrap.
6 Comments
Thanks for the good review! Looks like a quality product – now I want to get some of my photos printed that way too!
That being said, I still have a few questions that weren’t answered above:
1. How much of your photo’s sides get lost due to the canvas being printed & folded over the wood? i.e. Is your ENTIRE image visible as you expected it to be, or did they lose an inch or two all the way around in the framing process? This makes a difference for people with images containing interesting stuff at or near the edges.
2. How was their color reproduction? Did you have to tweak anything in Photoshop or anywhere to make sure that it printed close to how you thought it looked on your monitor, or did they just take a stab at it and get it right?
3. What did it cost, and how does this compare to alternatives? Cheaper? On par?
Thanks!
Thanks for the comment!
1. Not much is cut off at all actually. And that is a good question I should have addressed in my review. So good in fact that I think I will edit the review and add a side-by-side picture to compare the original photo with the canvas print. But in comparing the two myself it appears the amount that is cut off is negligible. It would only be a concern if there were necessary important elements within a super fine proximity to the edge of the photo. Certainly not an inch or two that’s for sure!
2. Color reproduction is surprisingly good. And more specifically I was concerned with the overall brightness of the print since this particular photo is dark to begin with but it turned out pretty good. Since the colors are subdued in this print I’d be curious how accurate more bold colors would be and so I’ll probably choose a more bold colored photo for my next canvas print. But for this particular print the colors were not off from the original by any real noticeable amount.
3. The cost can be found by going to the photo and clicking the Prints link above the photo. Then you can choose the options you want and find the price. Compared to what alternatives? Adorama? I’m actually not aware of any alternatives that work as seamlessly with photographer websites which kind of made the choice of Fotomoto easy. I have not compared cost to Adorama or other printing services since for me the ease of integrating Fotomoto with my website as well as the ease of the order process for customers was the major factor. I also don’t even know if places like Adorama offer canvas prints. Do they?
Thanks for this review on quality. I want to set up an art checkout on my website and everything else I’ve been finding the customer must leave your website and check out from your store at the print providers website. I found fotomoto, but was curious about their quality.
Have you ordered any of their other products? They say on their website they offer shirts, mugs, etc as well. I was wondering about the quality of that sort of thing.
Anyway, thank you again for your great review.
Hi Mel! Thanks for replying to my review. So far this is the only product I have ordered from Fotomoto. It’s not for any reason other than not wanting to spend the money right now. But I absolutely want to order more of my prints from them for the purpose of giving people a better idea of what to expect from Fotomoto (with future reviews) as well as to hang in my home! I don’t think Fotomoto is yet offering shirts and mugs but I could be mistaken.
Hi, nice site! I appreciate your Fotomoto review, as I’m thinking about using their service. However, I don’t know if this is a problem at my end/browser (Firefox) but even though your site states that all the images in your Portfolio page are available for purchase via Fotomoto, I can’t find their widget on that page or at the bottom of any of your images. Did you delete that or is there a problem at either of our ends?
Ken
Hi Ken! Thanks! Sorry about this. I switched to the built-in portfolio feature of the WordPress template I’m using and it’s not compatible with the Fotomoto toolbar. I hope to correct this at some point. In the meantime, if you browse through the Photoblog section you can see the Fotomoto toolbar below each photo. Over half the photos in my portfolio are posted to the photoblog.