Pictorem for Print on Demand portfolio

I’ve written about Pictorem before – I now have three main portfolio sites for my Fine-Art prints – Fine Art America, Pictorem and Photo4Me in the UK. If you decide to join Pictorem, please use this affiliate link. I might get a small bonus!

My reason for writing now is that I idly looked at the Sales History tab on Pictorem and saw a sale that I wasn’t aware of with a date of 18 February 2024. It was this print with a 34×24 inch frame.

The sale was shown under “Order Status” as Action Required and with no obvious reason for this (or indication that I should do something) I wrote to support and was told that the image didn’t directly fit the frame ordered (34×24) and that a crop was needed. This was on February 21st, 3 days after the order date. The support person sent me a link to do this, but when I wrote back confirming that I was the artist not the buyer, he said instead that he would contact the buyer to make this crop. The most obvious crop (I thought) was this, although I don’t really like losing all of that warm lit doorway on the left.

I had never noticed before, but a standard print at this sort of size is 34 x 24 inches, with the actual image printed at 30×20 with a 2 inch border. The site shows the full image when you choose this size of frame though, rather than a cropped version that matches the ratio of the print, so I guess the customer might be a bit confused about a request for cropping? I just tried to order the same print and wasn’t asked to crop the image before purchasing.

The next day, nothing had changed and so I wrote to the support person again saying that I would be willing to do the crop for the buyer, but he said he would email the buyer again and finally, on 24th February, the order status changed to awaiting Plexi – ready to print. I’ve never had an email about the sale though.

This whole saga worried me about other sales that might be left in limbo if I hadn’t accidentally seen the sale and taken some action. Perhaps Pictorem would have prompted the buyer without my involvement, but it does make you wonder! I have been promoting Pictorem because of the free shipping for 18 months or so, but most of my sales still come from Fine Art America and perhaps this is one of the reasons!

I’ve investigated this some more – there seems to be some flexibility around the exact ratio of the image. If it is clearly a panoramic image, the system shows the options for a framed print as a custom sized one that fits my image crop. There is a small box to see the standard frame sizes and if you choose that, you are presented with a tool to crop the image to fit the standard frame.

If the image is close to a 3:2 ratio, then it is less clear. A custom size frame is displayed, but it takes some time to appear. Immediately below is the same exact print shown in the standard sizes. The standard sizes are priced and an “order button is displayed. Almost everyone will follow that path, I would imagine. What is wrong here is that my print does not fit this standard size without cropping even though the example shows the full image in the frame. You aren’t given any option to crop as far as I can see. Only when the “behind the scenes” technicians start the printing process would they realize (I’m guessing) that it doesn’t fit, and they ask the customer for cropping instructions. Perhaps if they can do a quick crop that doesn’t impact the subject by cutting off a bit of generic scenery, for instance, they crop it themselves.

So, if you are close to 3:2 but not exactly there, there is a chance that your customer will be asked for a crop decision.

Prints left in the Shopping Cart

This made me investigate the admin areas of the site in a little more detail. I found one area under Online Tools, that showed the number of prints that had been left in the shopping cart over the past 30 days and mine showed:

I assume four different buyers had put these images in the shopping cart and then decided against the purchase. I did think for a time that if an image had been abandoned it would be great to offer the 15% discount if the item is still in the cart after 48 hours say. However, when I tried this for myself, a buyer would normally choose the frame and add it to the cart, before the system starts to ask for information to charge and ship the product. So in most cases, they don’t know the identity of the potential buyer. So maybe not a really workable idea!

I plan to ask Pictorem what they think of these events – have any of you had a similar experience?