Louis Brevetti, owner of printmyphotooncanvas.com based in Wolcott, Conn., estimates that he’s produced more than 1.5 million canvas prints during his career as an art publisher and as an art print provider for big box retailers.

Now, Brevetti aims to continue that production rate but with a different focus and a new online business. The strategy is simple: provide high-quality canvas prints at an affordable price with free value-added services to boot (color adjustments, red eye elimination and touching up minor blemishes).

Over the years Brevetti has learned through trial and error how to keep quality up and production costs down. What he found was that with the right printer, inkjet media and finishing methods it was possible to do it and keep materials and production in-house and in the U.S.

“We came up with a method to produce and finish canvas that allowed us a fantastic production rate, but the quality of our images was just okay. That’s how I found Dustin Flowers at LexJet. I asked Dustin to print a sample for me and I was very impressed with what he came up with,” says Brevetti. “My son Dan stretches the canvas with our special stretching technique that we guard very closely because it shaves off about 40 percent of production time. I have a Canon iPF8300 12-color printer and we print to Sunset Reserve Bright Matte Canvas. The difference in quality between what we were using before is like night and day. Dustin knew exactly what I was looking for, and everyone who has looked at our work has been very impressed.”

Brevetti adds that though the business is conducted almost exclusively on the Internet, he plans to open a storefront in Wolcott (Connecticut) as well. The website is set up to complete the canvas order in three simple steps. Brevetti says it was important to ensure the image travels from step to step exactly as it was in the previous set. For instance, in Step 2 users can crop their own photos as they like and their work will remain throughout the process.

“Every image we receive will be set on quality settings that maximize the art. If you send an image at 300 dpi we’ll print it at the highest quality setting. If you send an image that’s 100 dpi, we’ll print it in an 8-bit color format because it doesn’t do any good to print it on anything higher. If you send giclee quality we’ll print it at a giclee quality print setting at no extra charge. The quality of the image will dictate the print quality setting,” explains Brevetti. “For the stretcher bars we use mortised corners and put nails and brads in each corner so that the canvas will never come unfastened.”

With more than a million canvas prints behind him and what Brevetti hopes are a million more, he adds: “The most important thing I’ve learned over the years is that the customer has to feel that they received more than what they paid for. If they don’t feel that way they always wonder if they got what they could have gotten for their dollar.”

For more information, to see how it works and what you get, go to printmyphotooncanvas.com.