Photos to Art
Mobile snapshots become personal prints in a new app
In an expansion of Art.com‘s online service, Photos to Art, the eminent supplier of household decor is bringing personalized prints to social media. Photos to Art is now available as an iOS app capable of pulling images from phones as well as from Facebook and Instagram accounts, letting users order prints direct from their mobile devices. This means that the mass of digital content previously pinned to albums and applications are fair game for physical memorabilia.
Madhav Mehra—Senior VP of Product Management and User Experience of Art.com, who joined us not long ago as part of CH Zambia—agrees that this is part of a greater movement in which online usability enables offline experiences. Perhaps the most apt example of this connection is the app’s use of virtual reality, wherein users can see what there art will look like when mounted on a wall.
What’s more, an intelligent selection process recognizes file sizes, limiting options to correspond with the resolution of your image. For example, Instagram photos are limited to small size prints whereas the larger resolution of images in your camera roll frees up more options. The company also provides panoramic prints that work with iOS 6’s panorama feature.
While this is clearly the first step in a new direction for exploiting online photo sharing, Mehra already sees a wealth of potential. He notes that the homogenous look and size of Instagram photos make them prime for creating custom tiled mood boards and other decorative arrangements. In our own trial of the service, we kept things simple and chose a wood mount for an Instagram shot of a cross-sectioned Zeiss lens that we spotted at this year’s PhotoPlus International Expo.
Photos to Art is available for free from the iTunes App Store.
