It’s so easy these days to simply grab a camera or cell phone and snap a picture of whatever catches your eye. You may have thousands of photos just lying around. And that doesn’t count all of your other artwork like paintings and prints. So what is a person to do with all of these treasures that could never be parted with? There are many creative ways to hang and display art, and this article is full of such ideas. It will be hard to pick just a few!

The general rule of thumb for hanging objects on the wall is to hang them at eye level. They will simply be more pleasing to look at if you don’t have to look way up or down to see them. If you are hanging pieces in a group, think of all of them as one big picture. In these cases it may be easier to cut out scraps of paper the same size as your art and position them on the floor before actually going for the hammer. (Incidentally, odd numbered groupings always look the best.) Another important consideration is size – make sure the scale of your art matches the size of the wall and furniture. Lastly you will want to consider lighting. While objects and pictures do not need to be spotlighted, often times the art will be even more appealing if you focus a beam of light on it. Now that we have the basics of hanging art pieces we can talk about ways to arrange them. Here are some ideas:

Ways to Arrange Your Art on the Wall:

1. Hang several pictures in a row, either horizontally or vertically. You could have just three or as many as you need to fill up your wall. It’s a good way to keep your eyes moving around the room, too.

2. You can also offset them. Take two or more pictures and hang one. Then step the other one down by a few inches. It is sort of like hanging them on a diagonal.

3. Place four similarly shaped objects in a square to create a box shape. If you have six or more you could always do a rectangle.

4. Try placing art in a collage on your wall. Find several different objects such as paintings, photos, and architectural art and mix them up in a pleasing way. Keep them fairly close together and remember the rule of three.

5. Hang photos above a staircase. Echo the shape of your stairs by staggering the items up the wall like a set of steps.

6. Arrange your art in themes. If you have a bunch of botanicals, group them all together instead of placing them separately in different parts of your home.

Ways to Hang and Frame Your Art:

7. Frame your ordinary pictures in a unique way. For example, you could use silk flowers or evergreen garland to surround the piece. Simply glue them to the existing frame and hang.

8. Hang photos or pictures from ribbon or wire. You could even hang multiples together the same way by hanging a rod on the wall and stringing the photos from it on ribbon.

9. Arrange art around a doorway or window. Start at the bottom and go up one side, over the top, and down the other. The pieces should be small and not too busy if you do this.

10. Group pictures together in a collage or one of the other suggested shapes. Then take a piece of molding and build a frame big enough to surround the whole group and hang it on the wall around the pieces. Or you could just use paint and create a faux frame on the wall.

11. Do you have a landscape picture of the beach or countryside? Consider buying some inexpensive plastic shutters and putting them on either side of the item for a window effect.

Ways to Arrange Artwork on Furniture:

12. Look through every room in your house and see where you might be able to sit some pictures. Tops of cabinets and dressers work well, as do desks, the top of your TV, or even near the jacuzzi in the master bathroom.

13. Do you have a space between your kitchen cabinets and the ceiling? This is a perfect spot to display some small art.

14. Got a fireplace? Try putting some photos or paintings on the mantle – don’t hang them above, just sit them on top. Enhance the photo with a couple of well-chosen accessories.

15. If you have a curio cabinet that is not really being used for curios, you can always put art inside instead.

16. Do you own a piano? The top of an upright, or even a grand piano, is a great place for art items.

17. If your piece of art is relatively large, try sitting it on the floor. Lean it against a wall out of the way of kids, pets, and heavy traffic and watch the smiles you are sure to get.

18. Hang up a shelf, set your pictures on top and lean them against the wall. It is a nice change from hanging them by a nail.

19. If your d

Digital photography has a lot of advantages over film photography in many areas, but one of the most useful is the final output of the image itself. With film cameras you had to rely on the processing lab to make any general adjustments needed to your photos to make them appear their best, but with digital photos you as the photographer have all the tools you need to enhance and edit your own photos right at home.

Of course, how much editing you do to your photos before printing is entirely up to you and there are all kinds of preferences on photo editing from those that do almost no editing at all, to those who like to make major adjustments to almost every photo that they take. And there is plenty of middle ground in between those two extremes as well.

Quite often, many basic editing tasks can be done in the camera itself after the picture is taken including some simple cropping, removing red eye from flash photos, and rotation from landscape to portrait and vice versa. For many people, this is about all that they require anyway before printing out their snapshots, and this keeps things very easy and simple.

But to start to realize the potential that digital photography puts in the hands of the average person, a photo editing software program will be needed where you upload your photos from the camera to your computer and then open them in the program. You can then begin to perform all kinds of editing tasks including more advanced cropping, change the file size or format, adjust color saturation, contrast and brightness, and apply special effects.

There are several good free digital photo editing software programs available for download that can fit the bill for most common photo editing needs. All you have to do is perform a search for “free photo editing software” and you should have plenty of results to choose from.

But there are two programs for sale that seem to meet the needs of most average photographers whether novices or even serious hobbyists, and they are Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Paint Shop Pro 9. Both of these programs are very highly rated in most independent and consumer reviews as being very easy to learn and use, while also handling most any editing task that the average photographer could need.

For even more high end photo editing the full Adobe PhotoShop program will provide enough editing power to meet the needs and expectations of even the most discriminating photographers, but expect to pay quite a bit more for the added power and capability.

It should be clear then that regardless of the amount and scope of photo editing that you intend to do, there is a program that will let you do exactly what you want.

By: Thad Pickering

Tired of stacking piles of photo albums in the closet where the images will not be seen for years to come? Bored with the art prints that are available within your price range? Kill two birds with one stone with canvas photo printing.

Canvas photo printing is a technique that digitally imprints the image of your photo onto a canvas like those used in oil painting. It is usually not a matter of merely scanning the image into a computer. Most picture canvas artists draw out your photo by hand and feed the images into a computer that is specially programmed to replicate the craftsmanship associated with a fine gallery painting.

You can use canvas photo printing services to recreate whatever image you would like from your personal collection. If it is a copyrighted image of which you are not the legal owner ask your printing provider or artisan if it will be permitted before submission. Permission from the copyright owner is often enough to allow that image to be accepted. Chances are that you will not be able to obtain the rights to the images in popular magazines or books. If you really don’t have any photos of your own that you like but would like to use the canvas photo process anyway, there are websites that sell royalty free images for a low cost. Istockphoto is an example and the purchase price allows you to do pretty much whatever you would like with the image short of resale.

Create an impressive wall display by canvas photo printing a mural or series of coordinating images that can be hung together. Themes can be created from aspects of nature, color schemes, a favorite vacation or cherished family snapshots. Your canvas print can be further customized with the use of imprinted slogans or collage style writing and alternate images.

The images affixed to the canvas can recreate the clarity and sharpness of your original photo or mimic brushstrokes. Singular subjects especially pop with the usage of photo printing as the process adds the illusion of texture with visual techniques. If you like a simplistic look, some artists will do line drawings or outlines of the image in your photo for a pop art look or (as mentioned above) make a collage.

Traditional canvas art can be extremely expensive, especially if you are on the market for a larger piece. Canvas art made from your photos is cheaper because the artist does not need to spend time coming up with a design as it is already provided. With a minimal investment, you could combine the forces of your photo collection and art collection and rejuvenate those bare walls.

Creating an art collection doesn’t have to leave you bankrupt. Mix your photo based canvas art with other more traditional pieces for an Art Nuevo vibe. Inexpensive galley lights can be purchased, mounted to your ceiling and pointed at the more impressive art. Think of it as the grown up sophisticate’s version of night lights.

By: Victor Epand