My-picture.co.uk Canvas Collage & Poster Print Review

Features
Handling & Performance
Verdict
Specification

My-Picture.co.uk are an online printing company that specialises in producing canvases, posters and personalised gifts from photos. They've recently introduced a new photo Canvas Collage so we uploaded a selection of our own images to pop into one of these new styles so you can see if they offer good value for money. We've also created a few poster prints alongside the Canvas as these aren't something we've reviewed previously and they're something photographers visiting our site may be interested in. 

My-picture.co.uk Canvas Collage & Poster Print Features

The Canvas Collage is a new product from My-Picture.co.uk that's available in a variety of sizes with a wide selection of layouts and formats (square, portrait and landscape) on offer. Each collage has room for up to 8 photos, depending on the design you choose, and prices start from £14.99. 

Poster Prints come in 5 size options and 13 formats are available. All prints are matte finished in either colour or black & white and are printed on HD 275g/m² premium photo paper. Prices start from £3 for a 30x20cm print.

As for the printing process, My-Picture.co.uk are an HP partner so they use HP's UV-resistant, solvent-free ink to print onto HP-certified canvas which should minimise fade from UV light and canvases are hand-stretched over pine frames.

My-picture.co.uk Canvas Collage & Poster Print Handling & Performance

Placing an order with My-Picture.co.uk is really straightforward and we had no issues when designing both the products on test but we did find it a bit strange that there's no online gallery you can save images to, as some other companies offer, but it wasn't a major problem as you just upload directly from your hard drive to My-Picture's online editing area. We'd be guessing by not allowing permanent uploads, this helps with server costs, allowing the printed products they offer to remain reasonably priced but don't quote us on that.  

To begin the Canvas Collage creation process, you have to select a design of which there are 97 to choose from! You can sort by orientation, theme and layout so you're not scrolling through all of the designs at once then you click on the design you like the look of, choose the size you want to create and select if you require a hanger set which is priced at £3.

Once you click 'design collage' you're taken to My-Picture's online design area that has the main work area in the centre then options to the left and top. Handy tips pop up for those who haven't designed photo products before so you're not just sitting looking at the screen wondering what to do first and these tips continue to appear throughout the design process.

After uploading photos, there's an option to autofill the design or you can drag the photos into the layout yourself. The blue boxes are where images can be placed and they snap to fit. Once in place, you can rotate the image, crop/straighten or remove it from the picture box. When you click crop/straighten, a new window opens where you can move a defined box to select a different area of the image to appear on the print and there's a tool for straightening the photo. So you know what images have been used, a number appears on them so you won't accidentally use the same photo on your design twice. If you selected a design that features text, you simply click on the text to edit it where all of the usual editing options you'd expect are available. You can also add backgrounds from a wide selection My-Picture.co.uk have made available but we actually just prefer a plain white background as it's much cleaner and looks more professional. 

If you want more control over the design, you can click the 'Advanced Editing' option which allows you to add your own picture and text boxes so you can use one of the pre-set designs as a base and tweak it as you wish. You can end up with something very unique and personal to you but it does take some time to create. 

There's an option to save your project as you work on it and you can preview your design without all of the editing functions surrounding it, giving you a clearer idea of how it'll look when finished. Once happy, you click 'Order' and your product is added to your shopping basket. 

 The Poster Print ordering process is a lot simpler as there's no designing involved. Instead, you upload your images (a gage pops up to let you know how long this will take) and then select which you want to turn into a Poster Print. From there, you select the size/format and then you can adjust the print area if you want to. There's also an option for printing in black and white but if you do want a black and white print, we'd recommend you do this yourself before uploading to ensure the tones etc. are exactly as you want them. 

After you add your print to the shopping basket, you are taken back to where you uploaded all of your photos so you can select another image to turn into a Poster Print. 

When you go to the checkout, you'll notice shipping and handling fees are added which vary depending on where you live (£6.00 to the UK) but you do get free delivery with orders over £49. My-Picture.co.uk use Royal Mail and UPS to deliver their products which take around 4-11 working days to arrive depending on what your order. 

We ordered two Canvas Collages (40x40cm) and several prints in the 40x30cm landscape format along with a hanger set for each canvas as these aren't included in the price of the canvas. All of the products arrived well packaged with bubble wrap protecting the canvas collage prints while the photo prints arrived rolled together in a tube and wrapped in tissue paper. Sending prints to customers rolled in tubes seems to be something many print creators do but it does mean you have to spend time flattening your images out when they arrive which is a little bit annoying.

My-Picute.co.uk recommends that files have a minimum resolution of 75 DPI so do keep this in mind when ordering to ensure your prints are of the highest quality possible. As you'd expect, various image types are accepted and they can be up to 60MB in size. The majority of images used on the products we produced were actually captured on an iPhone 8 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus smartphone and the quality is impressive for images that have been captured on smartphones. 

The Canvas Collages are stretched across 2cm pine frames with white edges so there's no wrapping of your images around the frame. The canvas is pulled tight but not to the point it feels like it could give at any moment with staples keeping it in place. The back actually looks quite neat but it's not like you'll see this anyway when it's hanging on a wall. Colour reproduction is accurate and the images appear exactly as we uploaded them with no cropping or adjustment (unless it was carried out by us). If using smartphone images, I wouldn't go above a 40x40cm canvas size simply because quality will drop off but for the everyday photographer not doing this for a living, the canvas prints will look great at home or gifted to loved ones as presents. For those of you who offer printed products for a living, you're probably not going to be looking/using a generic printing company but if you want to see how they fair, My-Picture.co.uk does offer a commercial option. 

If you don't purchase the additional hanging set, you can use two small screws to hang the canvas on (depending on its size) as it's actually really lightweight. 

The 40x30cm landscape format Poster Prints were created from images captured on a much higher resolution camera (apart from the one featuring lobster pots; this was captured on an iPhone 8 Plus) and we're extremely happy with the quality. Colours are accurate and reflect the colours, dynamic range and brightness levels seen in the images before upload. The matt finish is also lovely (we prefer this to shiny images).

We converted the black and white image before uploading to ensure the processing was exactly as we wanted it to be so we can't comment on how good the black and white results are when converted by My-Picture.co.uk. The only slight snag, mentioned further up in the text as well, is that the prints come rolled so you have to allow time for them to flatten out. You also have to be very careful when unpacking them as they're rolled quite closely with tissue paper and heavy hands could rip the prints. 

Overall, if you're not a pro photographer but would like to print a collection of family snaps on a canvas, My-Picture.co.uk's Collage Canvases would be an inexpensive, smart choice and their poster prints look great, too.  

Value For Money

The cost of each product varies depending on what size you want with a 40x30cm Canvas Collage starting at £14.00. The max size you can order is 100x75cm and this is priced at £52.00. The Poster Prints range from £3.00 for a 30x20cm print to £7.00 for a 60x40cm print. 

There are delivery charges to take into account if you don't meet the minimum order price for free delivery and hanging tools, priced at £3, have to be purchased separately. However, even when taking these into consideration, the price of the My-Picture.co.uk products are still incredibly reasonable. Delivery times are longer than Parrot Print who offer next day delivery but they are on par with other companies such as Pixum. 

Other manufacturers creating wall art at a similar quality include Pixum and Parrot Print but do a quick Google, and you will find plenty more.

My-picture.co.uk Canvas Collage & Poster Print Verdict

For those looking for an inexpensive way to create reasonably priced gifts for loved ones or indeed canvas prints/poster prints for your own walls at home, My-Picture.co.uk are an excellent choice. Having to pay extra for mounting equipment is slightly annoying but the kits aren't expensive should you want to use them and even when they are included, the prints are still very reasonably priced. Quality is great, products are easy to create and the prices are very reasonable. 

If you're looking for inexpensive canvas and poster prints for your living room wall, my-picture.co.uk are a great option.