Suitable images for acrylic (Perspex) printing

Acrylic printing overview

Acrylic printing works using the same process as canvas printing, with the ink being printed direct to the media, but instead of printing direct to a roll of flexible canvas, the image is printed directly onto a 5mm piece of rigid acrylic. The images are printed on the reverse side of the acrylic to help protect the ink from damage and the front of the acrylic leaves a gloss finish.

Any pure white that is in the image is not printed and so left completely transparent. Lighter colours are printed, but only with a thin covering of ink, so these areas will not be totally opaque. As white and lighter colours are left transparent, acrylic photo prints are recommended to be displayed on white or light coloured pattern free walls. The colour of the wall replaces the white in the image, giving an effective sense of image depth.

Images that work the best as acrylic prints

The types of images that work the best as acrylic photo prints are brightly coloured images. Images that have a lot of white in them also work very well, especially portraits and family photos taken on a white background. The image below shows an acrylic print that uses a photo taken on a white background. As the image shows, the majority of the acrylic is left transparent and the wall colour gives the image a background.

White backgrounds are not printed

Heavily saturated images that contain bright, light colours also work well. The image below demonstrates this.

Saturated, bright acrylic print

Dark images do not work as well as lighter images, especially when the main subject area of the acrylic photo print is made up of dark, saturated colours. Companies like ESJ Designs will give advice regarding the image suitability for acrylic printing. The image below shows an acrylic print that uses dark colours. This image works well because the dark areas do not contain important subject matter. The lightness of the flower is where the eye is drawn to.

Acrylic photo print using dark image