CanvasPop puts your digital images on the wall - could put them up in Times Square

More than 1.5 million people see Times Square every day. How cool would it be to have those people looking at one of your photos?

For 100 people, Ottawa's CanvasPop will make that a reality.

Launched today, CanvasPop allows users to upload photos and images from Facebook, Flickr, their iPhone or really any source of digital imagery and puts on a canvas, which will then be shipped to the user.

The company is an off-shoot of DNA11, which made prints from people's DNA and fingerprints.

That was a niche offering, according to co-founder Adrian Salamunovic who had been getting requests to put regular images on a canvas.

The result is CanvasPop which has been processing orders non-stop since doing a soft-launch last Thursday.

Prices range from $35 for an 8"x10" poster print of an image to $537.90 for a 24"x72" print mounted on a floating frame.

The company also provides professional photo processing to add creative effects to images or to keep low-res camera phone pictures looking good when they're blown up. Customers will receive a digital proof to preview and approve before the final printing takes place. 

As a launch bonus, CanvasPop has purchased on the 7,4000 square foot Reuters billboard in Times Square and the first 100 people to order photos from CanvasPop will have the opportunity to have that photo displayed for 15 seconds.

The users who choose the option will receive a time-stamped photo of their image being displayed for New Yorkers.

"You can say 'look, my picture was in Times Squre'," said Salamunovic, who noted that the 15 second exposure would normally cost hundreds of dollars.

Another Ottawa start-up founder, Luc Levesque, shows off his CanvasPop creation, a collage of 300 pictures from his travel blogging site, TravelPod