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Any heads doing this in house or having it done anywhere? Looking for someone to work with on a few projects.
-------------------- Jeff Vrstal Main Street Signs 157 E. Main Street Evansville, WI 53536 1-608-882-0322 Posts: 670 | From: Evansville, Wisconsin | Registered: Sep 2001
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Mike,...A giclee print is a print from certain type printers also used for digital printing such as the encad that is acceptable in the fine art market. It is rapidly becoming acceptable as a reproductive process for fine art. I too would be interested if there are any sign shops out there doing these type prints.
-------------------- fly low...timi/NC is, Tim Barrow Barrow Art Signs Winston-Salem,NC Posts: 2224 | From: Winston-Salem,NC,USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Thanks Bill & Jane. Yes, I am doing these. Please contact me if you want to learn about the process or if you want to get some prints. I can print just a few or a bunch. I have the eight color printer that is made to print fine art. Call me. 270-395-7356
-------------------- Steve Estes Sign Studio Calvert City, Ky 42029 Posts: 185 | From: possum trot ky usa | Registered: Apr 1999
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I do signs and have a gift shop where I sell art prints.Most any printer that will print 600dpi and up will do art prints. When they first started doing 300dpi was ok.Alot of the output depends on your rip and quality of paper,I use canvas and watercolor paper. Getting the colors to print out is a big issue,as you know what you see on the screen and what the printer prints can be two different things. Also getting quality art to print is a very big problem. Unless you have a source of art to print and a retail shop to sell them out of,where you can get top dollar for them it is hard to make money doing art prints.
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I for to say use need to use archival ink on the art prints.So unless you want to use the expensive ink for every thing you will need a second printer. You can buy art prints on the net cheaper than you can print them. Gene
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My printer is the Roland Hi Fi Jet pro. 8 color, pigment or solvent inks. It will print on a large variety of papers, canvases, films and vinyls. We use it in the shop for a variety of things. Small stickers that used to kill us to weed, specialty multicolor truck door art, big hambergers etc for billboards. Does a nice job. The big stuff, 5 ft by 10 ft etc at high dpi is difficult, and I do not yet have a handle on production of such. A ripped file for a piece of art that big can be as large as 5 or 6 gig. Bilboard art and such though does not require that high dpi. Be glad to answer questions or take advice from anyone on the subject. e-mail me at signstudio@mchsi.com. My opinion on the ability to make money on fine art prints is a bit different as it has earned a potfull of it for me.
-------------------- Steve Estes Sign Studio Calvert City, Ky 42029 Posts: 185 | From: possum trot ky usa | Registered: Apr 1999
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Giclee is French and means something like "to squirt". An artist in Southern California went to an inkjetter to reproduce some work on canvas. They wanted a better word than inkjet. The printer's first language was French so he came up with giclee.
So, there is no such thing as a giclee standard. There are archival papers and inks, and when you print with archival ink on an archival medium, I guess that makes it a giclee.
I have an HP5000, which when loaded with UV ink, is supposed to produce a 100 year print on archival paper. We have done some of it, and, as described by others, the real trick is getting the colors to come out right. And yes, it can be very profitable.
We are not soliciting work. Go to Steve Estes.
Vic G
-------------------- Victor Georgiou Danville, CA , USA Posts: 1746 | From: Danville, CA , USA | Registered: Dec 1998
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Giclee is french and means "that which is sprayed , it's a term that comes from the IRIS printer that has a rotating drum with heads that sprays the ink onto the substrates. IRIS printers are arguably the "BEST" quality "inkjets" out there and were around (and still are) way before the current crop of wide format inkjets. The quality of an IRIS print is exceptional , almost like continuous tone dye sub , and thus the term "giclee" printing has become synonomous with very high quality archival type museum prints vs the normal "press and print" style that a lot of digital print houses produce. Obviously a lot of care has to be taken with "giclee" printing in terms of papers that contain no acids , inkset quality , durability of print , resolution and colour matching and thus it is the upper end and most profitable part of the market. As an aside , the DPI of your printer means diddly squat , a 300 dpi (actually LPI) dye sub printer will run rings around a 2880 dpi inkjet as it maps one pixel per dot. CMYK inkjets can only really print 7 colours (CMYK + C+M + C+Y + M+Y) and thus the representation of a pixel has to be a "cell" (sort of like a halftone , a laser printer can only print one colour and you can STILL represent shades of grey , colours that DONT exist on a laser , by using a halftone) Thus the real resolution of a printer is the LPI (lines per inch which translates to how many cells per inch a printer can produce which is NOT the DPI measurement, DPI is physical dots per inch the printer can lay down , however one dot is NOT one pixel) One cell maps to a single pixel , or should!! The addition of extra colours , variable dot size and so on increase the colour gamut or shading options and give a far better percieved output. The Question one should ask a printer mnfgr is what is the true LPI of the printer at various DPI resolutions and on various media, as its DPI figure is not really an indication of print quality. Added to that , the LPI resolution is really pretty important as to the SIZE of the file sent to you. The best Inkjets at 2880 dpi probably give less than a 300 lpi resolution and its probably closer to 150 lpi , one should have at LEAST 150 pixels per inch of printed output or at least the LPI value per inch. More is better up to 2x the LPI value , less is bad as one can never get the best output from less. A good rule of thumb is to ask whomever supplies artwork to supply it at 200 pixels per inch of printed output (This has NOTHING to do with the DPI value the graphic has embeded , DPI refers to the output device , a 600 dpi image that is 150 pixels by 150 pixels will print 1" x 1" on a 150 lpi device and will print 1/4" x 1/4" on a 600 lpi device or will display 2" x 2" on your monitor which is a 72 dpi device) So a 8 x 10 pic , in RGB should be a 1600 x 2000 pixel graphic and cos there are 3 channels , the size of the graphic is 1600 x 2000 x 3 = 9.6 megs (this is for the best output) with Giclee printing , pixel per inch values can go as high as 600 and thus the 8 x 10 print can be a file as big as 86 megs and something like a 50" x 100" print can be as high as 5 gigs (which could take a LONG time to rip and to print) For normal output , one can go as low as 75-100 LPI(ppi) or lower for billboard type stuff. so essentially , one can actually see from a file size , what the biggest output of that file can be at the best quality or whether one WILL get best quality at the size the customer specified.
-------------------- Rodney Gold Toker Bros Posts: 57 | From: South Africa | Registered: Aug 2003
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Ha! Bob, I'll second that! Rodney, that was an excellent explanation of LPI/DPI/PPI!
And as Gene mentioned, color management is EXTREMELY critical in Giclee'/fine art printing.
Most of the Roland printers, the HP 5000/5500, Epsons, and ColorSpans are suitable for fine art printing, but a major investment in color management software and equipment like Gretag MacBeth or X-Rite/Monaco and the time to get it right is necessary.
Rodney, while the Iris is the original standard for Giclee', I've heard that the durability of the Iris prints has been found to be unsatisfactory and that this is one of the reasons many fine art printers have gone to the other machines with pigmented/archival inks. Is this accurate?
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Mike, where the heck is the forum? I've been all over the FLAAR sites for a couple of years and never saw one. I'm going to feel pretty silly if it was right in front of me...
-------------------- Kenneth Sandlin Author of "Wide Format Printing: An Introduction and Buyer's Guide" PO Box 1295 St. Augustine, FL 32085 kennethsandlin@msn.com http://wfprinting.tripod.com Posts: 116 | From: Jacksonville, FL | Registered: May 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Kenneth Sandlin: Mike, where the heck is the forum? I've been all over the FLAAR sites for a couple of years and never saw one. I'm going to feel pretty silly if it was right in front of me...
No, I meant the FLAAR sites as a whole, as a forum for them to present their information.. not as a public forum like a bulletin board.
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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Alfred, The FLAAR guys primarily concentrate on fine art due to their focus on work for their museums. Thermal printers are not really suitable for that, neither are solvent printers, which they also do not cover for the same reasons.
They do cover most all of the Aqueous printers and also the eco-solvent pritners a little.
As to Gerber, it depends on which printers you're referring to. We are all familiar with the Edge and I don't think anyone would say it's not an excellent printer for its class. But if you're referring to their new "Jetster", this is just a rebranded version of the Mutoh Falcon Outdoor running eco-solvent inks similar to the Roland SolJet. Same limitations as to media.
Not that the Falcon Outdoor is not an excellent eco-solvent printer. Newsflash on it also, Mutoh is introducing "true" solvent inks which are supposed to work on that printer to print to a wide variety of inexpensive, uncoated media.
-------------------- Kenneth Sandlin Author of "Wide Format Printing: An Introduction and Buyer's Guide" PO Box 1295 St. Augustine, FL 32085 kennethsandlin@msn.com http://wfprinting.tripod.com Posts: 116 | From: Jacksonville, FL | Registered: May 2002
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Kenneth , The Roland and a few other brands are introducing a new IR cureable inkset , The Roland Soljets will have a new inkset in a week or 2 as well as a retrofit heater bar. Evidently the worldwide annoucement of all this will be at the month end. This means that one can print and cut on uncoated media so long as it can be heated (you can use the inkset to print on coated media too) I am not connected with Roland , but own a Soljet Pro II and have my retrofit on order. I have seen output on uncoated Starex Premium vinyl and it is BETTER than on coated stuff , the graphic is far more glossy , far more scratch resisitant and looks like a dye sub output. As to the negatives of this , I was told that speed suffers a little by one dealer , albeit the local agents deny this, but the positives far outweigh this. Output is instantly or near instantly dry. This solves a huge amount of problems and empowers users (I hate the fact that manufactureres want you to use their expensive coated media and hate the fact that a lot of the media is just not avaialable) So in essence those that own printers capable of the retrofit (I think the mutoh can be done?) can use a "solvent" ink without the overhead.
-------------------- Rodney Gold Toker Bros Posts: 57 | From: South Africa | Registered: Aug 2003
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I'd heard about the new Roland IR retrofit and that the Starex media works well, but have they had any luck with any other medias? The Encad VinylJet seems to be working with many different medias, though the speed is very slow and the image quality is fairly low, though sufficient for most outdoor printing.
How much is the retrofit kit?
I agree that both of these printers will be great for end users. Between these and the JV3, "entry-level" outdoor printing is getting more and more affordable.
-------------------- Kenneth Sandlin Author of "Wide Format Printing: An Introduction and Buyer's Guide" PO Box 1295 St. Augustine, FL 32085 kennethsandlin@msn.com http://wfprinting.tripod.com Posts: 116 | From: Jacksonville, FL | Registered: May 2002
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As to Gerber, it depends on which printers you're referring to. We are all familiar with the Edge and I don't think anyone would say it's not an excellent printer for its class. But if you're referring to their new "Jetster", this is just a rebranded version of the Mutoh Falcon Outdoor running eco-solvent inks similar to the Roland SolJet. Same limitations as to media.
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