Buying Art Prints or Canvasses Online can be a rewarding and time-saving experience. The range and choice available exceeds anything that you can find on your high street and buying from sellers who do not have the overheads of a high street gallery can produce significant price savings on retail costs.
But how can you be sure of what you are buying? Poster quality prints can be low quality and printed on thin papers, and we all know that the digital age has brought with it the ability to create copied and unlicensed  works which can be difficult to tell from the real thing. Here are two issues to consider when choosing your art over the internet.

1. Quality
Ensure that you buying licenced copies from an approved seller who is sourcing his products from a Fine Art Publisher. If in doubt ask them!
Almost all popular images are the copyright of both the Artist and the Publisher chosen by the artist to market their work. Fine Art Publishers produce prints to a rigerous standard as laid down by The Fine Art Trade Guild. These include controls on the quality and light-fastness of the ink used and standards for the quality and thickness of fine art papers. Making sure that you are buying this standard of work will go a long way to ensure that you are buying a quality work which will stand the test of time.
Note: All of my fine Art items on E-bay and at my gallerywow.co.uk website are licenced copies from Fine Art Publishers. Reworked items such as Canvas Bonded Prints and Curved Prints all start off from a licenced official copy.

2. Size (Image Size and Paper/Canvas Size)  
There are no universally accepted standard sizes for printed art.
Many top Publishers are now sizing their Prints and Canvasses in Metric. Expressed as either 800 x 600mm for example or 80 x 60cm for the same sized artwork. There are still pubishers producing products in imperial sizes and odd sizes like 19.75 x 12.5 inches. These sizes always refer to the paper or canvas size. This is often different to the image size as many works have a white or coloured border. The image size will often also be stated, but if it is not, and this is important to you, ask.
Considering these size issues will help you get the right sized artwork for the position you wish to hang it, and in the case of printed art on paper, will assist you when it comes to choosing a frame for your newly purchased art.

Good Luck

Michael Moloney