File or print: what you receive

A portrait is drawn digitally. That means the finished work is a file: not a single object you can drop and lose, but an image a print can be made from. Which raises the question almost everyone asks: do I need the file or the printed work?

The answer depends on what you intend to do with the portrait. The difference isn't quality, it's purpose.

What the file is

The finished work at full resolution. With it you can:

• look at it on a screen, set it as a phone background, send it to family;
• print it now or in five years, once or several times;
• keep it safely: a copy in the cloud doesn't fade and doesn't tear.

What the file doesn't do: hang on a wall. As long as the portrait lives in a phone, it stays one more image in a feed rather than an object in a home. People who commission a portrait as a gift or as a memory usually want the object.

Why resolution matters

Printing doesn't add what the file doesn't hold. A print a metre wide needs many times more pixels than a postcard, and if they aren't there, the canvas shows softness and plastic smoothness instead of detail.

So the print size isn't decided at the last moment; it's decided together with the work, and the file is made for the format you want from the start. A small print from a large file is always possible. The reverse is not.

If you haven't decided how large the portrait on the wall will be, say so before the work starts rather than after. It's cheaper than redrawing.

Screen and print are different things

Colour on a screen emits light; colour on a print reflects it. The same file looks brighter and more contrasted on a phone than it does in your hands. That isn't a printing fault, it's physics, and you get used to it.

One practical conclusion: don't judge a print against a phone screen, especially with night mode or auto-brightness on. Judge it by how the work looks on the wall in ordinary household light.

File or canvas: how to choose

We print on canvas only. Canvas gives texture and weight, behaves like a painting and carries a large format well. The file is for where the work lives on a screen, in a phone, in a message.

There is no universal "better" here. There is a room, the light in it, and the wall the portrait is going on, and the choice follows from those: file or canvas.

Printing is a separate service

The work and the print are counted separately: you receive the file in any case, you order a print if you want one, and its price depends on the size. A print can also be ordered later, the file doesn't go anywhere.

The choice gets easier with one question: where do you see this portrait a year from now? If it's on a wall, take the print and decide the size early. If it's a gift to someone far away, or a memory for the family archive, the file is enough, printing can wait.