Collection · 12 tools

Artwork Photo Tools

Artwork photo tools correct the two things a camera gets wrong about a painting (its shape and its color) and prepare references and prints at the right size. Like all our free tools for artists, they process every photo on your device.

Free · No sign-up · Runs in your browser

The collection · 12 tools

How they fit together

Photographing a finished piece, in order

The artwork photo tools are set out below in the order an artist reaches for them, and each is one of our free tools for artists.

  1. Geometry comes first. A camera held even slightly above or below the center of a painting records a trapezoid instead of a rectangle, and the artwork photo straightener maps the four corners you mark back to a rectangle, at the artwork's real proportions once you enter its measured size.

  2. Color comes second, on the straightened image, with the wall cropped away so it no longer distracts the eye while you judge the correction. The artwork white balance tool corrects the cast from one click on an area that should be neutral, a gray card or the white of the canvas edge, with exposure and levels for the rest.

  3. Presentation comes last. The background remover cuts a sculpture, a ceramic or a framed piece away from its setting with a model that runs on your device, and the crop and print tools prepare the same file for a canvas ratio or a print across several pages.

  4. Some work does not fit one frame. A large canvas or a mural is photographed in overlapping pieces, and the artwork scanner finds where each piece continues the next, matches their exposure and joins them into one picture, which then goes to the straightener like any other.

  5. The file itself is the final step. The sRGB export names the color profile a photo carries, converts it to sRGB so that a phone, a shop page and a print lab all read the same colors, and sizes and sharpens the copy for where it is going.

  6. A print needs more pixels than a small file has. The photo upscaler for prints enlarges a picture by a resample that adds no detail of its own, or by a model that runs on your device, and says what print size the result reaches at the resolution you choose.

  7. Two tools serve the drawing table instead of the finished piece. The sketch cleaner turns a photographed sketch into white paper and your own marks, and the shadow and highlight recovery tool opens the dark parts of a reference photo without moving its middle values.

Questions about artwork photo tools

The 3 questions below explain why photographed paintings change color, which light suits the job, and whether a phone is enough.

Why do photos of paintings come out the wrong color?

Photos of paintings come out the wrong color because cameras set white balance automatically by assuming the scene averages out to gray, and a painting that fills the frame with one dominant color breaks that assumption. Warm indoor bulbs and mixed daylight add a cast on top, which one click on a known neutral removes.

What light is best for photographing artwork?

Even, diffuse light from two sides at 45 degrees to the surface, with the flash off, is the standard setup for photographing flat artwork. The angle sends glare away from the lens, and matching both sides keeps the light even across the surface.

Can I photograph artwork with a phone?

Yes, you can photograph artwork with a phone. A current phone camera records enough pixels for web images and small prints, and the usual faults (keystoning, glare and color cast) come from the setup, not the sensor. Straighten and white-balance the photo afterwards, and keep the original file as your master.