Since the holidays are quickly approaching, I have enlisted the help of my brother, an avid photographer, to share his experience with Posterjack.ca. With a myriad of creative photo art ideas, holiday decorating and gift giving is easy thanks to Posterjack. Here is my brother's review of the entire ordering process using one of his beautiful photographs as can been seen on his ConceptsbyDT Flickr photostream.

My sister (yes, the Toronto Teacher Mom) was kind enough to put me into contact with Posterjack. The purpose of our little joint venture was to scratch an itch I've been having to print some of my photographs on a format larger than a 4"x6" print. At the same time, I am able to help Diana with her quest to provide a comprehensive list of Holiday Gift Ideas. You have to admit, there is no better gift than the gift of a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork.

Posterjack is an online photo printing website that allows you to turn your digital photographs into large format works of art. You can choose to print your photographs as posters, canvas prints, metal prints and much more! I have been a fan of canvas prints ever since my friend showed me a few of the canvas prints in his gallery. The medium adds a certain creative feel to the image.

I wanted to turn this photograph into something I could show off to my family and friends. The fact that I almost broke my ankle (and more importantly my camera and lens) getting this shot is a badge of honour. The following picture was taken at Albion Falls in Hamilton earlier this summer.

The first few steps in ordering from Posterjack involve selecting a print medium, uploading your file, and choosing the size of the print. The most common sizes are shown, but don't forget to check out the "more sizes" option at the bottom. As you can see from the picture below, I found a great size to suit my photograph.

After the image is uploaded (this may take a few moments), the image is automatically analyzed to determine if the photograph meets certain quality standards. This is to ensure that your image will look great in a larger format. Posterjack also checks to see if the dimensions of your photograph are compatible with the size of print selected. As you can see below, my photograph was not in perfect proportion to the size of print selected. With a bit of cropping, I was able to adjust to the desired size.

With the image cropped to fit the size of the print, you are able to preview the image to ensure you didn't crop out any important details.

Once I was happy with the cropping, Posterjack provided me with some other finishing options that included adding a frame, a colour border or custom effects.

I wanted to keep my canvas print as simple as possible, so I didn't choose any of the additional options available. This isn't to say that you won't find these features handy or helpful. While my photograph was already converted to black & white, you can convert your images to B&W using one of the available visual effects. This is very helpful if you don't have any editing software on your computer.