Your Samsung Frame TV can show any art you like, and plenty of it is free. Millions of paintings, prints, and photographs are in the public domain and free to use. The hard part is getting them onto the TV at the right size.
There are two ways to do it:
- The fast way: Frame Crop. Search for art, crop it, and send it to your TV from one app, in about 12 seconds per piece.
- The manual way: SmartThings. Find and download art yourself, crop it to 16:9, then upload it through Samsung's SmartThings app.
| Frame Crop Recommended | SmartThings (manual) | |
|---|---|---|
| Find art | Search millions of free works in the app | Search museum sites yourself |
| Crop to fit (no forced mat) | Automatic | You crop it yourself |
| Send to the TV | Direct, in batches | Through the SmartThings app |
| Portrait art | Automatic portrait crops | If you crop it yourself |
| Time per piece | About 12 seconds | Several minutes |
The fast way: add free art with Frame Crop
I built Frame Crop after years of owning a Frame TV and getting tired of the download, crop, and upload routine. It puts the whole process in one app.
1. Install Frame Crop
Frame Crop is available for iPhone, Android, and Mac. It's a one-time purchase with no subscription.
2. Connect to your Frame TV
Make sure your phone or Mac is on the same Wi-Fi network as your TV, then connect to your Frame from inside Frame Crop. The first time, your TV will ask you to allow the connection. Accept it with your remote. Uploads stay on your home network.
3. Find free art
Search for an artist, a style, or a subject, like "Monet", "winter landscape", or "botanical prints". Frame Crop searches millions of free, high-resolution works from:
- Smithsonian Open Access: paintings, prints, and photographs released under CC0
- Wikimedia Commons: public domain masterpieces from museums around the world
- Unsplash: modern photography from thousands of photographers
- Museum collections: open access art from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art
Not sure where to start? Browse popular art that other Frame Crop users are displaying, or one of our seasonal collections.
4. Crop it to fit
The Frame's screen is 16:9 (3840 × 2160 on 4K models). If you upload an image with a different shape, the TV forces a mat around it. Frame Crop crops each piece to the exact shape so it fills the screen edge to edge. You choose which part of the artwork to keep. It also crops for portrait orientation if you mount your Frame vertically.
5. Send it to your TV
Upload a single piece, or select dozens of images and send them all to Art Mode at once. No cables, no Samsung Cloud, and no SmartThings.
Go further with Frame Crop for Mac
Frame Crop for Mac turns your computer into a control center for your Frame:
- Collections: build a Van Gogh wing or a coastal summer rotation, then push the whole set to your TV in one click
- Mats and filters: apply Samsung's mat colors and styles to one piece or a whole collection
- Scheduled rotations: change the art on a schedule, like a new piece every morning
- Multiple TVs: find every Frame on your network and manage them from one window
Already own Frame Crop on iPhone or Android? Get the Mac app for free.
Why does my art have a mat around it?
This is the most common Frame TV question. Art Mode expects a 16:9 image. Most paintings aren't that shape, so when you upload them as-is, the TV shrinks the image and fills the leftover space with a mat.
You have two options:
- Crop the art to 16:9. The image fills the whole screen with no border. This is what Frame Crop does by default.
- Keep the mat on purpose. A mat can look great, like a real gallery frame. If you go this route, try a mat color that contrasts with your bezel.
The manual way: upload art with SmartThings
If you'd rather do it yourself, here's the free, manual process.
1. Find and download free art
Pick a piece from one of the free art sources below and download the largest version available. Aim for at least 3840 pixels wide for a 4K Frame.
2. Crop it to 16:9
Use a photo editor to crop the image to a 16:9 shape (3840 × 2160 for 4K models). Skip this step and the TV will add a mat.
3. Install the SmartThings app
Download SmartThings for iPhone or Android and sign in with a Samsung account.
4. Add your Frame TV
Tap the + icon, choose Add device, then Scan for nearby devices. Your phone and TV need to be on the same Wi-Fi network for the scan to find the TV.
5. Upload through Art Mode
Open the Devices tab, tap your Frame TV, then tap Art Mode. Skip past the featured and paid art and open your photo gallery (the + button). Pick the image you cropped and add it.
6. Adjust how it's displayed
After uploading, you can pick a mat style and color, or apply one of Samsung's photo filters.
Where to find free art for your Frame TV
Free art sources around the web
These sites are great for browsing. Art from them has to be downloaded, cropped, and uploaded by hand unless the source is also built into Frame Crop.
- The Smithsonian Institution: Open Access (in Frame Crop)
- Wikimedia Commons (in Frame Crop)
- Unsplash: Free High-Resolution Photos (in Frame Crop)
- The Art Institute of Chicago (in Frame Crop)
- The Cleveland Museum of Art: Open Access (in Frame Crop)
- The National Gallery of Art
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Open Access
- Moma UK: Public Domain Images
- ArtVee
- 400+ 4K open source artworks (r/TheFrame)
Have a Hisense CanvasTV?
Frame Crop crops art to the right size for Hisense CanvasTV too. Hisense doesn't offer a way for apps to upload directly, so you upload the finished images through Hisense's own process.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The Frame lets you upload your own images to Art Mode at no cost. Public domain art from museums like the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art is free to use.
The Frame adds a mat when an image doesn’t match the screen’s 16:9 shape. Crop the image to 16:9 (3840 × 2160 on 4K models) and it will fill the screen edge to edge. Frame Crop does this crop for you.
Yes. Frame Crop connects to your Frame over your home Wi-Fi and uploads art straight to Art Mode, one piece or many at once. You don’t need to use the SmartThings app.
Frame Crop crops art to the right size for Hisense CanvasTV, but Hisense does not offer a way for apps to upload directly, so you upload the finished images using Hisense’s own process.
Make sure your phone or computer is on the same Wi-Fi network as the TV and that the TV is on. Then try again.