What Your Print Is Made On

A portrait you will live with every day deserves a straight answer about what it is printed on. This post names the paper and canvas behind each of our prints, with the maker's own specification, and then tells you which sizes our portraits print well at, and which they don't.

First, a correction

Until 24 September 2026, our pricing page described the Giclée print as "310 gsm cotton rag." That was wrong. The print we order from Prodigi is their Enhanced Matte Art paper, which weighs 200 gsm. The 310 gsm paper in Prodigi's range is a different one, Hahnemühle German Etching, which we have never sold. We have corrected every page that said it. If you bought a Giclée print before then, you received exactly the Enhanced Matte Art print that was ordered, and if that is not what you expected, write to support@painted.app.

The papers and the canvas

Which should you choose? The Giclée print is the everyday choice: matte, quiet, easy to frame. The Hahnemühle print costs more and is on the heavier cotton paper photographers use for exhibition prints, with a soft texture you can feel. Canvas arrives ready to hang with no frame and no glass, which suits a portrait you want to see from across a room.

The limit nobody else will tell you

Here is the admission. Most of our styles are painted at 1024 by 1536 pixels. That is enough for a small print and not enough for a large one. We don't upscale, so the pixels you see are the pixels that are printed. Prodigi's own canvas page names 300 pixels per inch as the optimum. Measured along the long side, a 1536-pixel portrait gives these densities:

We still sell the larger sizes, because a canvas seen from the sofa is forgiving and some couples want the size more than the detail. But you should know what you are buying: at 16x24 inches and above, a portrait painted by hand, or a print from a high-resolution photograph, will be sharper than ours.

One more limit worth knowing. A portrait painted wide, in landscape, has no wall-art option, because Prodigi offers no landscape size of these papers that we could order. Those portraits can be bought as files and apparel; we would rather leave the print off than stretch a wide portrait into a tall frame.

Against a painting done by hand

At small sizes our print costs about what a hand-painted portrait does. Instapainting publishes a painting of two people at 16x16 inches for $123 rolled or $133 wrapped; our 16x16 Giclée print is $129 and our 16x16 canvas $199. Above the three smallest sizes our prices rise steeply: a 20x30 Giclée print is $499, where PortraitFlip publishes a 16x20 oil for $284. At those sizes a painter will give you more for the money, and we would rather say so than have you find out on your wall.

What we give you instead is the portrait you have already seen. You chose it from previews of your own faces before you paid, the file is yours to print again, and a print that arrives damaged, defective or misprinted is replaced or refunded.

Our advice, plainly

• For a print you will look at closely, on a desk, a shelf or a hallway wall, choose 8x12 or 12x18. The Giclée print at 12x18 is $99.
• For the feel of a gallery print, choose the Hahnemühle paper at 12x18.
• For a statement above the sofa, choose canvas and accept that it is meant to be seen from across the room.
• For a very large wall where detail matters, book a painter. We mean that.

Whatever you choose, it starts with the free previews, and nothing is printed until you have picked the one you want to live with.