Product Spotlight: Artsy Couture

Learn more about Artsy Couture and join the giveaway for a FREE Canvas Wrap in this month’s latest product spotlight.

So many of our images live solely online these days that a lot of people don’t have a home-printing set-up. It’s understandable; printing can be expensive, time-consuming and extremely confusing if you’re new to the game. If you’re a photography business owner, it can be costly to create a thoroughly professional printing studio that many clients won’t even partake in.

For the last few years I haven’t been producing prints at home, because it is just so much easier to run the images I really need through a service. Most of my past clients weren’t interested in paying the price of printing through me or they wanted sizes and styles I couldn’t produce on my own. Some companies, like Shutterfly, can print 100 4×6” prints in a snap for a low price, a great offer for a grandfather who just wants an album of when his grandkids visited last summer. However, when you want beautifully finished prints with professional color correction and lots of other pro-photographer goodies, you’ll need a better option.

Artsy Couture is a full service printer that grew from a small business based in a garage to a boutique photo lab loved by photographers of any standard. They offer everything from canvas wraps to customized photo albums to printed USB drives. If you’re like me and don’t have an at-home set-up, but still need stunning prints that are shockingly easy to create, you’re going to love Artsy Couture. You can even enter to win a FREE Canvas Wrap with this special giveaway for ON1 Customers!

Their online platform is incredibly straightforward; create an account, upload images to your customized galleries, and start ordering. It’s seriously that simple. After I created my account, I immediately jumped over to My Galleries, where you can create folders of saved images that you’re interested in printing.
You can see below that I made a few “galleries” to hold specific types of photos, which will help me find them when I’m creating my prints.

Let’s talk about the products you can order: I started out by making a custom USB drive. If you work with clients on a regular basis and charge well for your photography, presentation should come with the territory. This was an enormous problem when I worked with clients; I tried everything from DVDs (back in old days!), cheap USB drives from Best Buy, and Dropbox. They all caused problems. DVDs fail, cheap USBs are cheap for a reason and Dropbox can be unbelievably inconvenient for clients who aren’t computer-savvy.

Artsy Couture offers custom USB drives – in multiple sizes – that are both beautiful for your client and won’t make you worry that they’ll break down in the mail. They have three different styles and I ended up choosing the Premium Acrylic option, as it allows you to include a photo and your business logo! The process of uploading was pretty simple and I was absolutely blown away by how gorgeous it looked once it arrived. The drive stays tightly closed with a small magnet, so it’ll survive a trip in the mail without an issue and the photo looked amazing in the acrylic. Your clients are going to be shocked with the quality and thoughtfulness of receiving a USB with their faces on it! Easy to make, easy to impress.

When you’re ordering prints, let’s just say that you have a lot of options. While I won’t delve into every type of print they offer, I will make a point to mention the different types of “wraps” you can order. Most people automatically think of canvas when they hear “gallery wrap,” but Artsy Couture actually offers three kinds – canvas, paper and wood. While I ordered the basic canvas wrap, I highly recommend checking out the wood wrap, as each piece of wood is completely unique, meaning each print will be unique as well! Don’t forget to enter to win a FREE Canvas Wrap in this special giveaway for ON1 Customers!

Once you’ve created your print online and you’re ready to order, there’s one last important option that Artsy Couture offers: professional color correction. This ended up being such an amazing offer for someone like me. I don’t have a calibration system at home and I haven’t printed personally in a while, so I desperately needed a professional to look at my photos before they were printed. If you’re 100% confident in your prints when you send them off, you don’t have to choose this option, but I found it incredibly useful. My prints ended up looking even better than they did on my computer screen (which means I probably need to get it calibrated)!

The prints were impeccably packaged with lots of cardboard and bubble wrap to help cushion any blows during travel. I ordered two different sizes, two different widths and two very different images to help show off their color correction service. The wedding photo was taken indoor with indoor lighting, but it also had natural coming down from a skylight above; a color correction nightmare. The dog photo was in a controlled environment with studio lighting and very little color, making it much easier to work with. Both ended up looking beautiful.

Artsy Couture Canvas Wraps

The width different is very noticeable when you hold the prints next to each other. The .75” width is very similar to a thick frame and doesn’t jut off the wall too heavily. The 1.5” is actually quite large, giving the print a stronger presence when hung on a wall. Whatever your preference, both looked great.

The backs of the prints are covered with a thick paper to prevent anything punch through your image accidentally. They also include small plastic bumpers, which will help keep your image parallel to the wall when it gets hung up. It’s a small addition to the print, but it can make a huge difference!

The only note I wanted to bring up will be relevant to almost any printing service out there; remember to read processing and shipping guidelines. Due to the fact that Artsy Couture is a boutique company with a large amount of orders, they can take up to 7 business days to process a print before shipping. If you’re up against a very, very tight deadline, I would highly recommend emailing their support staff to check in about shipping times. This is going to be the same problem you might run into with about any professional printer, so they aren’t unique in that sense. I just like to mention it, as I bet they hear a lot of shocked customers who can’t believe their prints haven’t shipping. Remember that processing, color correcting and printing take a lot of time!

I can’t begin to recommend Artsy Couture enough for anyone interested in printing. They offer a wide range of prints for you to choose from, they can help make your professional photography client happier with the help of customized USB drives, they make uploading photos easy, they color correct your image for no additional cost and they also happen to be incredibly nice if you run into any problems. I loved my experience with them and can’t wait to order again in the future. As I browsed all the different product I could get, it was so difficult to choose just a few for this review – I could have gotten one of everything!

• FREE Canvas Wrap with this special giveaway for ON1 Customers!
• Artsy Couture Canvas Wraps
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