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Getting good giclee prints?
How difficult is it to get good giclee prints of your work? Especially in the flesh tones?
I'm very frustrated with the difficulty of getting good images of my paintings and also of paintings in general. It seems that between the camera, the monitors and the various types of print technology, it is impossible to get an image in any medium that matches the original painting!
I just finished a portrait that I will be delivering this week and have made the best photos I could of it using my Canon DSLR camera. I'm very pleased with the portrait, however, and wanted the very best giclee print of it I could get so I took it to a local printer here in Atlanta who has a national reputationf or producing top quality giclees and had him do a scan and make a full size giclee print for me. He took four weeks to do the scan and print. I now have his scan and my photos to compare.
The print he made looks nice, but when I compare it side by side to the original, the original looks much better! Compared to the original, the print looks slightly "washed out". It looks like the print needs a touch more magenta in it because the flesh tones seems a bit pale.
They use a 4"x5" large-format camera with a BetterLight Super8K scanback, the shutter is open for 12 to 15 minutes and the images are up to 384 megapixels, so I assume the equipment isn't the problem. The service includes color matching.
It it common for giclees to be off a bit in color? Are flesh tones that difficult to match?
I'm very frustrated with the difficulty of getting good images of my paintings and also of paintings in general. It seems that between the camera, the monitors and the various types of print technology, it is impossible to get an image in any medium that matches the original painting!
I just finished a portrait that I will be delivering this week and have made the best photos I could of it using my Canon DSLR camera. I'm very pleased with the portrait, however, and wanted the very best giclee print of it I could get so I took it to a local printer here in Atlanta who has a national reputationf or producing top quality giclees and had him do a scan and make a full size giclee print for me. He took four weeks to do the scan and print. I now have his scan and my photos to compare.
The print he made looks nice, but when I compare it side by side to the original, the original looks much better! Compared to the original, the print looks slightly "washed out". It looks like the print needs a touch more magenta in it because the flesh tones seems a bit pale.
They use a 4"x5" large-format camera with a BetterLight Super8K scanback, the shutter is open for 12 to 15 minutes and the images are up to 384 megapixels, so I assume the equipment isn't the problem. The service includes color matching.
It it common for giclees to be off a bit in color? Are flesh tones that difficult to match?
Comments
The ones now are in burnt umber only. We tried a smooth card and a textured linen card. Same settings on the printer, completely different results. The smooth card has a yellowy tint to it and the linen is quite dark and almost a deep alizarin crimson to it in places.
I remember when studying art history in High School, I would look at glossy art books and noticed that each book had a different colour to the same picture. I would then go to the gallery and see the painting in real life. They were always so much more vibrant.
So I have given up my attempt to faithfully match the painting in print. This time, I am going with what print looks right on its own merits.
I have no idea about flesh tones, but presume they are the same as animals and landscape and buildings.
Hope this helps even if not specifically about giclees.
https://www.posterfactory.com.au/fine-art-giclee-printing/
Denis
If you are paying for color matching it should match your original. No excuses. I ain't rocket science.
Demand correct color.
I had to take my original back today because I need to ship it (to my client. I can't monkey with them any more.
The printer is going to keep trying.
"...The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on a modified Iris printer in a process invented in the late 1980s. It has since been used loosely to mean any fine-art printing, usually archival, printed by inkjet. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops to suggest high quality printing, but is an unregulated word with no associated warranty of quality..."
It is sold and gone and I want a good print for myself to use to show what I can do and for future display. Also, the client is interested in possibly getting a print for himself, since the original is a gift for his daughter.
Also, if I'm going to pay $150 for a digital capture and a print, I expect something much closer than what I have been getting, You haven't seen any of the three versions I was given, so you can't criticize me for expecting better.
And no, i can't post a photo of it. As I said, it is a gift (Christmas) and I won't post it anywhere until after it has been presented to my client's daughter.
@KingstonFineArt, no, not rocket science; but colour, is a science, nevertheless
That probably wouldn't help anything. The printer managed to get a print that looks sort of OK if it is not next to the original. I've showed both to two artists who have very good eyes for color and both agree with my assessment that the print should be better. I'm still working with him to figure out what he is doing wrong. I'm hearing from a lot of artists that the quality of this vendor's prints has declined.
@KingstonFineArt is correct that the giclee print should match the original. There is something wrong with this vendor's equipment or the ICC profiles of the equipment, or his processes. I suspect he is not using and profiling his equipment correctly.
I haven't gotten everything figured out yet, but in the future, I'm going to take my own RAW images to see if I can get accurate color on my vendor's printer. I'm also going to get what I need to calibrate my BenQ monitor. With good ICC profiles, I should be able to do that. I've just got to learn how to do all of thet.
Icc profiles are specific to the printer and the paper. You would need your vendors icc files installed on your computer. In PS you do menu View/Proof Setup/Custom. You select and apply the icc for the printer/paper. To see the print purview for the setup you select menu View/Proof Colors. Below is the setup for my Epson printer.
You then manipulate the color to match the original in the Proof Colors. Save it a color corrected file. With a BenQ monitor and up to date OS software you should be able to get very close to correct on your screen. You're right that the vendors ICCs my be corrupted and need to be refreshed.
I bought my Epson 7800 in 2005 because bad prints were costing me too much. It has continued to make beautiful correct prints. But it costs about $1200 a year to feed with ink.
Some paintings are just so out of gamut. So that a lot of masking and other tricks have to be applied. Most printing vendors will not go that far. They apply only general solutions. Yet they charge for CUSTOM work. There are great printers who will work with you. Usually at a price.
I can not find the equivalent processes in Affinity
I sold hundreds of reproductions and original digital prints from my 7800 at juried art fairs for about 5 years. At best on a bright sunny day with a few edibles I recollect almost breaking even.
Thanks! That's helpful.
An artist friend bought a printer with the idea of making her own prints and selling printing services. She made some good portrait prints for me, but she found that she couldn't make a profit at it for the same reasons you gave. I think the commercial printers are just churning "stuff" out as fast as they can and only do minimal "color correction" because of the expense of the giclee supplies and materials plus they have overhead and labor to factor in.
found a guy in England who has a website, www.colourmanagement.net, and he gives a really good explanation of icc profiles and how to use them. I'm using his site as a starting point to learn as much as I can about setting up my own color manage process.
My vendor uses Canon ImagePROGRAF printers and has a couple of the latest generation ones. Even though we have had a lot of difficulty with getting a good print, he is interested in working with me to help my do my own imaging and editing so that he can do the printing, so I won't have any problem getting his ICC files. It looks like Canon tries to make calibration and generatin of the ICC files as automatic as possible, but I'm having trouble finding out how they go about it. More digging is required!
I need to get a color patch target and a colorimeter that I can use to develop the ICC files for my camera and monitor. I have a Canon EOS Rebel T6 camera and a BenQ sw2700pt monitor. Do you have any recommendations for what I need to get?
Also, other than www.colourmanagement.net, do you have recommendation for sources I can go to to educate myself better?
The latest print still doesn;t quite match, but I've decided to be satisfied with it. My vendors is going to work with me to help me set up my own digital capture/editing capability and then send the files to him for printing. We'll see if that will work better.
Through all of this, I managed to develop a good relationship with them!