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The reproduction of fine art Part 2 - part 2 of 1 2

by Mike McNamee Published 01/03/2003

Output - putting ink to paper

The choice of output is wider than ever. As has already been discussed pigment based inks are almost mandatory for fine art reproduction and there does not appear to be anything on the horizon to change this. Given that we are looking to inkjet output, the paper has a large influence. The Fine Art Trade Guild demands that accredited prints and printers should have Blue Wool rating of at least 6 and that the paper should be an acid free, archival quality of at least 250gsm. You can check the detail on their web site at http://www.fineart.co.uk/qualifs/printstd.htm. The conditions are quite onerous but so are the prices that can be charged for accredited prints. You are not obliged of course to follow FATG standards but they do provide a point of reference. An interesting feature of the standards is that colour fidelity never gets a mention, perhaps reflecting the background of the Guild and its artists. As photographers who daily confront the problems sending materials for reproduction we are perhaps ahead of them in that sphere.

The Epson 2100 and 7600 printers stand out as clear contenders for your choice of output. The 7600 is specifically targeted at the photography and fine art market. It can accept a variety of paper, roll, sheet and board media and lists 23 media inking choices in its print drop down. Epson have been careful to accommodate the need to output on papers other than their own and the new printers perform admirably with Permajet, Hahnemule, Somerset, Lyson and Cranes materials (there are others but we have only personally tested those in the list). There is an almost limitless choice of paper, ink and settings combinations and some of these issues are discussed in the various paper reviews we have conducted lately.

A choice that has to be made is between the Matte Black ink and the Photo Black. They are quite different, the Photo Black is a dye and the Matte Black is a pigment. Within any ink set it is not normally the black which fades first and so the lifetimes for black and white prints made with Epson Ultrachrome inks are rated as more than 100 years. The values for longevity vary according to where you look. The lowest rating is for Somerset velvet at 57 years for colour using Matte Back ink. The Epson Premium Glossy has the highest rating at 85 years. They average around 75 years and variations in display conditions mean that they are probably all around the same for practical purposes. People never display original watercolours in bright sunlight and digital prints should be afforded the same care unless you are willing to enjoy them now and repent at leisure! Independent testing by FOGRA for Epson rated all the combinations (Photo Black on "photo" papers and Matte Black on "art" papers) at Blue Wool 6-7 thus meeting FATG standards. If you chose to use other ink sets (and there are many) check on the manufacturers web site for the fade testing.

We will not in this article be talking about colour management and profiles for fine art printing. The issues are more or less the same as other photographic activities except that there is usually a need to match colours of original and print. This is difficult and artists are very sensitive to their colours. Comparisons (favourable and otherwise) are very easy to make when you have an original and a reproduction before you. If you are printing for a client you need to convince them at the outset which colours are likely to be out of gamut and how much compromise is going to have to be made in bringing the overall colours to an optimum match. Calibrated equipment and the use of quality controls are an important element in this quest.

To RIP or Not To RIP

Left to their own devices, Epson printers will use the built-in look up tables or, if you choose to do so, a bespoke profile specific to your printer-paper combination. The next level of control is afforded by the use of a raster image processor (RIP). These come in various guises and prices from around the £350 mark to many thousands of pounds.

We chose to look at the Shiraz RIP from AIT International. This has a good reputation amongst photographers as being easy to use and efficient. You get some idea where your hard-earned cash goes when you open the box - no less than 4 CD's and a printed manual. The subject is a little big for coverage in this feature so we will come back to RIPs in a later issue; however, here are the basics. They offer control over the linearisation of the inks, which improves both the overall colour precision and also helps to maintain good neutral colours. Shiraz also allows nesting, which is the arranging of different images together on the width of your roll so as to optimise your paper usage. Once set up, the host computer can be allowed to get on with printing without any further intervention from the photographer. A batch of prints from a wedding for example could be nested for any number of different images and image sizes.

Particularly for fine art repro, the RIP also allows the user to adjust the inking levels. The total ink limit on an inkjet is almost always higher than conventional printing but by loading the maximum ink onto the paper the highest fade resistance is achieved. Too much ink will cause cockling of a paper and the inking level must be matched to the substrate saturation level.

Finally RIPs also have the ability to process EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) files typically used in page layout programs. Without a RIP such an image may appear as a box on the page, an 8-bit TIFF proxy image or, in the worst case, a bunch of gobbledegook!

In Conclusion

Hopefully you have gathered that there is a lot more to Fine Art Reproduction that first meets the eye. Regard this as both a challenge and a business opportunity, any investment in time and money is quite likely to provide a return. Your other business activities can also benefit. Whilst the word Giclee became debased by the influx of non-archival printing technologies, it is now set to regain some of its mystique and we hear from our American cousins that wedding clients over there are starting to enquire if Giclee prints are available as part of the package. The moral is obvious - high quality, high technology prints can attract a substantial premium in price so give it some serious thought. In the tough trading environment of the day, investments will be better able to gather a return if they are multi-use.

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1st Published 01/03/2003
last update 09/12/2022 14:58:33

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