Samsung Frame TV Art: What Looks Best and How to Upload

The art that looks best on a Samsung Frame TV is the art that looks printed: paper or plaster texture, muted colour, soft contrast and no large glowing white areas, in a 16:9 landscape file of 3840 × 2160, the native resolution of 4K Frame models. Japanese ink paintings, woodblock-style prints and calm architecture read as a framed picture from across the room. Neon, glossy renders and pure black give away that it is a screen. You upload your own images with the SmartThings app or a USB stick and then pick a mat.

What makes art look real on The Frame

Art Mode works when the picture behaves like ink on paper rather than light on a panel. Five things help most:

• Texture. Visible paper grain, washi fibres or plaster give the eye something physical. Smooth gradients look digital.
• Muted colour. Cream, indigo, sage and warm grey sit naturally on a wall. Saturated cyan and magenta glow.
• No pure white. A large white area at full brightness lights up the room. Cream and off-white look like paper.
• No pure black either. A black field looks like a switched-off TV. Charcoal and ink washes read as a print.
• A clear subject with breathing room. A mat covers the edges, so keep the subject away from the borders.

Recent Frame models have a matte, anti-glare screen that helps the paper effect, and Art Mode adjusts brightness to the room through a light sensor. Even so, a slightly lower Art Mode brightness than the default usually looks more like paper in the evening.

Art that works: ink, woodblock and quiet architecture

These six Velpaper desktop wallpapers are 3840 × 2160, the exact pixel size of a 4K Frame, so they need no cropping or scaling.

Ink Mist Ridge4K · DesktopInk Quiet Lake4K · DesktopSnow Village4K · DesktopPine Coast4K · DesktopShoji Moon4K · DesktopPortico4K · Desktop

Ink Mist Ridge is black ink pines on a ridge across cream paper, with a tiny red sun; it looks like a scroll painting behind glass. Ink Quiet Lake is one small boat on still water with a lot of empty paper, the calmest choice for a living room. Snow Village is a woodblock-style snowy mountain over a village under a starry indigo sky, the strongest colour of the six and still matte. Pine Coast is a lone pine on a rock above indigo waves, on warm paper. Shoji Moon is a pale moon behind shoji paper with leaf shadows, almost colourless, good in a bright room. Portico is a white classical temple reflected in still water under a pink and blue sky, for a lighter, more architectural wall.

More in the same mood: our Japanese ink wallpapers and ukiyo-e wallpapers.

How to upload your own art to The Frame

Samsung's menu names change between app versions and TV model years, so use these steps as a map rather than exact labels.

With the SmartThings app

1. Save the image to your phone's photo library. Use the full 3840 × 2160 file, not a screenshot.
2. Open SmartThings and tap your Frame TV. The phone and TV must be on the same Wi-Fi network.
3. Open Art Mode (shown as Art in some versions).
4. Go to your own photos section, usually called My Photos or My Collection, and tap Add or the plus button.
5. Pick the images and confirm the upload.
6. Choose a mat style and colour, or no mat, and set the image to display.

With a USB stick

1. Copy the JPG files to a USB stick.
2. Plug it into the TV, or into the One Connect box on models that have one.
3. In Art Mode, open your photos section and choose the option to add or import from USB.
4. Select the images, import them and pick a mat.

Samsung's own help pages and the Frame's manual list the current menu names for your model year.

Choosing a mat and the right file

A digital mat is the single biggest step from TV to picture frame. It adds a border that hides the screen edge and gives a busy image room to breathe.

• Off-white mat, ink art. A cream or white mat with Ink Mist Ridge or Shoji Moon looks like a gallery print.
• Dark or colour mat, woodblock prints. Snow Village and Pine Coast have deep indigo in them; a navy or charcoal mat picks it up.
• No mat, landscapes with empty space. Ink Quiet Lake and Portico have soft edges and work full-bleed.

File checklist: 16:9 landscape, 3840 × 2160, JPG. A mat crops a little from the edges or shrinks the picture, so keep important details out of the outer tenth of the frame. Portrait art shown on a landscape Frame gets wide side borders; use landscape files whenever you can.

Common problems and fixes

• The art looks like a lit screen. Lower the Art Mode brightness and choose a picture with cream rather than white areas.
• The picture is soft. The upload was smaller than 3840 × 2160, often a screenshot or a photo sent through a messaging app that compressed it. Upload the original file.
• The image is cropped strangely. It is not 16:9. Crop it to 3840 × 2160 before uploading, or pick a mat that shows the whole picture.
• The upload fails. Phone and TV are on different networks, or the app needs an update. Put both on the same Wi-Fi and update SmartThings.
• The TV wakes up by itself. That is the motion sensor in Art Mode settings; adjust or turn it off there.
• Colours look off. Some models offer a colour tone setting for Art Mode. Warmer tones suit paper-based art.

Getting the art in Velpaper

Every Velpaper wallpaper is an original by designer Carlos Vivero. Desktop wallpapers are 3840 × 2160, some are 5120 × 2880, and phone wallpapers are 2160 × 3840. Velpaper is an app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android, with the same catalog on velpaper.com, and the desktop wallpapers are free in full size with no account and no watermark. These are files for your own screens, not a Samsung Art Store subscription.

1. On your phone, open Ink Mist Ridge in the Velpaper app or on velpaper.com.
2. Download the 3840 × 2160 original and save it to your photo library.
3. Upload it to The Frame through SmartThings and pick a cream mat.

For the same calm look on your phone, the portrait versions of Snow Village and Pine Coast are in the app as well.