Dinkla Canvas Wrap Actions: the Gallery Wrap and 5 other varieties for the action tool of Photoshop®.

Easy, flexible and fast actions, no installation of a plug-in needed. The Plain Wrap and the Gallery Wrap are the most basic. The Gallery wrap is the only one that asks for some size computing done by the user. Instructions are in the action stops. Color for the stretcher side has to be chosen in the Plain Wrap. The Gallery Wrap is using actual image data for the stretcher frame sides, the image is enlarged and will extend up to the back of the stretcher frame. If that is not possible or not preferred you can use one of the following wrap choices that are all based on copying part of the original image edges to extend the image character over the edges.





The Mirror Wrap, the Deflection Wrap, the Fast Extrusion Wrap and the Precise Extrusion Wrap are more complicated but ask less of the user's computing skills. Just add the numbers, the action-stops explain which numbers. There's a wrap area selection at some point where you can blur the sides if desired. You can also stop the action there and use the area selection for another filter and continue the action after that. Some trials with actions and the action menu will make it easier to add your own choice of filtering.
For the last 4 complicated wraps there are limitations: The maximum size in both directions covered by the actions is a bit less than 6 meters, 20 feet. The stretcher strip thickness can be 2 inches maximum, there is a 1/8 inch tolerance per side added automatically.
The minimum PPI number allowed at the stretcher frame size setting will be 20 PPI. You can always upsample in that first choice of the action to get above 20 PPI. It is not recommended to upsample when the 20 PPI or more is already available. The action will take more time than necessary if you select a high PPI number there right away. Canvas print quality usually requires less than 300 PPI input to the driver and optimal quality will already be available at 150-200 PPI input, the quality of the wrap isn't getting better with higher numbers and overall time in processing and printing increases. So keeping the resolution at 200 PPI or lower may be wiser but given enough computing power and scratch disc capacity it could be used with higher PPI numbers. Large frames and high PPI numbers will take a lot of time to process depending on the system the software runs on.

On all wraps a grey line is added at the boundary of the image wrap, the printed page and halfway, two times half an inch white in between, so it is easier to measure at the back of the stretcher frame whether the image is in the center and whether the tension is equal along the sides. That boundary isn't the ideal extra canvas you would like to have for applying tension and fixing the canvas with staples to the frame. It is more a minimum of canvas added to get the largest prints possible from the fixed widths of canvas rolls and printers. If possible use more canvas for easier stretching. On the other hand if you like to have less canvas material at the back and you are able to stretch with just 3/4 of an inch canvas at the back you could deselect the last two canvas steps in an action. I would suggest to duplicate the action set then to keep an unchanged one next to it. Some experience with action editing may be required. The guide lines are represented with the Fast Extrusion Wrap in the larger image, in practice the Fast Extrusion Wrap is more economic in processing time than the Precise Extrusion Wrap but the canvas edges have to be folded in a more complicated way to hide the white corners.


An extra image size resampling choice is added at the end of each wrap action to add a percentage to the size in the direction the canvas is transported on the printer. This compensates the shrinking of the canvas after printing and varnishing. The actual percentage to use depends on the canvas quality and varnishing done. Some RIPs have the percentage already incorporated in the substrate choices so in that case one should not add the percentage here.

Two comments:

Please, always check the edges on the monitor at 100% to see whether it is done correctly. By making the actions universal for sizes up to almost 6 meter and for high and low resolutions there's always a chance that the wrap isn't as nice as you would get with a complete manual method on a fixed size. As a result of copying the image edges there's also the more pronounced double image edge with all the flaws you wouldn't see on the normal image. Light fall off on the edges, the scan that should have been cropped a bit more, it all becomes more pronounced when the edge is doubled with mirroring etc. Some samples above and the one at the right will show that the top edge of the image and the copied wrap at that side is too light at the frames edge etc. It isn't retouched here to show what can happen.

With the Plain Wrap there's a chance that you will select a frame side color that is beyond the gamut of the image itself, in the conversion to the printer profile this darker or more saturated color influences the image color depending on the rendering chosen. To avoid that issue you could select a color in the image itself with the Eyedropper tool or do the conversion to the printer profile (P2P) on the image before the actions and then print with color management off.

Copyright to all actions, action methods, texts, on this site and to certain photographs used to illustrate them are held by the developer Ernst Dinkla. The site itself and some photographs are copyright 2006 by Ernst Dinkla, Dinkla Grafische Techniek, The Netherlands. All right reserved. The actions have been tested on all Photoshop CS versions and their respective platform versions. No issues were reported. Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe.