Originals Only

Do a bulk edit (behind the scenes) to remove all the prices for prints and products. Make the prices blank, nothing, not even zero.

Thank you David - will work on it in morning

Glen, being that this is a PRINT ON DEMAND site, you might not get much traffic for originals.
In my 7 years here, I think I've only gotten a couple of request via FAA for my originals.
Why not offer prints too?
Offer prints here along with originals and also focus on selling originals in another venue.
For me, I sell my originals on Etsy.
Good luck to you. Your paintings are lovely.

Carlin Blahnik - main reason photos - if I take a pic of my paintings and upload them - I hear they are grainy ,too dark, too light blah blah blah - I get as close as I can So people can see what they would be getting I don’t really like to edit them cause then they aren’t what I am selling - but then if someone is interested in any of them then I have to wait and see if they can be printed or not so this would just take all the guess work out of it

I only see one that I'm sure won't print and maybe a couple that are questionable. I'd just leave them up and let QA sort it out when they sell. If anybody but a person from the FAA QA department says it might not be printable they are just guessing.

Glen,

Are you saying that because your "system" of copying your originals is lacking, you can't sell here?

I might have an answer and if I remember, you have asked this before.....

Rich

Glen, I agree there is a lot of effort required to photo or scan art.
I probably spend more time adjusting colors in my image to match the original than I spent painting the original.
If I wasn't lazy, I would have them professionally scanned.
My point is that FAA is a print site, not the place to sell only Original.
You will have better luck with another site where shoppers are looking to purchase the original.

Rich I don’t recall asking this question before although it may have been part of a discussion at one point /all I’m saying is that I’m not good with photo taking and use of the internet is just a pain for me - others around my area have offered to help but have yet to do so - I have stuff that could be uploaded but as anyone can tell I’m not good with keywords or descriptions heck even naming them is a chore

Hi

Here are some tips for you that we give people photographing their work. However, even if you scan, some will help

First off, all artwork should be photographed following these simple steps:

1. Use at least a 10-12 MP camera, with a manual focus lens not an auto focus. The higher the MP the camera, the larger the file we have to print from. If you want to offer large prints, you need to use a high MP camera.

2. Mount the camera to a tripod. If you don't have a tripod, use a stack of books, a table, anything. You just have to have the camera sitting on something, not hand held.

3. Shoot outdoors in natural light. Make sure you white balance your camera too, or the colours won't be right.

4. Export at the highest possible file size while staying under our less than 25 MB limit.

If you sell an image we will refuse to print if the image shows.......

Pixellation
Blockiness
Bad cropping
Blurriness not in keeping with the image (ie not meant to be there)
normal font signature (Arial, Times New Roman etc)
signature cropped half off the image
large watermarks
noticeable camera flash
Upsized images

We do not do quality control until you sell so, it is your responsibility to quality control your images carefully before uploading. You do this by zooming in a photo editor to 100% and then carefully going over the image, checking for the above defects

We require Adobe RGB or sRGB and do not accept CMYK or ProPhoto

Here are some examples for you http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2704747

We need 100 pixels/inch in order to have a nice image for printing. That makes the math easy as well. Your image menu can be viewed as a pixels/inch ratio, and you can see how many inches wide by tall your image is. You can shrink down the inches in this menu if the image is blurry. This is shrinking the image to make it a little smaller. You can shrink the image down and it will help the quality of the image, just never blow it up in this menu.

If your image is 1400 pixels by 1000 pixels then the image can be printed up to 14x10. etc.etc.

If you plan to sell online, to have any success, you will need to educate yourself about keywords and marketing. How else can you expect your art to be found?
If you don't want to learn about SEO and marketing, then stick to galleries, shows and fairs.
It's just how it is.
I find the internet is easy compared to shows and fairs.

Carlin I agree - I didn’t plan on doing it that way for a really long time just til things get figured out - my wife is going to start doing the internet part And I will just have to get someone to do the photos way too much mess for me to figure out

I sell Originals HERE.

And because they are 3 dimensional pieces, they do not lend themselves to POD images.

And many are already in a frame which is an FAA No-no.

So, the photos of my work were done to satisfy the selling of the originals, not the creating of printable images.


Things went along fine, selling an original now and then.


UNTIL

FAA had a customer that wanted an image of one of my originals

So, I spent a whole day, under the tutelage of the FAA ( the lovely lady's name escapes me) office.

Taking photo after photo, trying to get the entire depth of field in focus of this small 3 dimensional piece.

And cropping the frame out, which hurt since it was an integral part of the piece.

But it was all done, and I had a POD sale with my Vulture Sculptures...and made a couple of bucks..


Now, what to do after that.?

When a piece can be cropped without losing too much of it's character..I spend a little bit more time making sure all the pixels are in the right place.

And make that as an alternate POD offering.


You must remember too, that you can only be found, nowadays, with FAA's in house search engine if the piece is offered as a POD.


I'm sure Glen, there are those out there that want to buy the original of your truly fine paintings.

So, put a price as an original on all your pieces

And go from there, one by one improving the images for POD

I have a professional photo printing company near me. I get some local prints done there but I have seen artists take large paintings to them. They scan them and produce a digital image of perfect quality that looks exactly like the original.

I don’t know how much they charge for that service but if you have a place like that near you it may be worth asking them. It would make it so much easier for you.

Also I would think more carefully about pricing. Your first three sizes of prints are the same price and the larger sizes are very low priced. I would look at what other artists charge for similar images and find an average.