Category: Help With My Prints

Photographing your artwork is the first step to digital printing for artists. While scanning can usually result in a better quality digital reproduction a well photographed work of art can still yield incredible giclee and other digital prints.

Did you know that you can order a run of giclee printing offline. One little known secret is FinerWorks, while being an online print on demand service for artists and photographers, also has an offline program. The offline program provides the flexibility for artists, curators, decorators and businesses needing large or massive print runs to place special orders they might otherwise not be able to on our website. The advantage to these larger runs is we are able to still offer volume pricing on other media types not available for online orders.

So what’s the deal with those little green stamps of approval? That is a question that is bound to come up within the next few days as the first batch of order shipped with those stamped on the package begin to arrive. I recently was sent some prints by another company to see how they have been addressing certain packaging challenges. Even after shipping countless orders over the years, we are always looking at ways we can make improvements in the area of packaging and giving the recipients a sense of comfort in knowing their shipments are being sent with care. I was curious what they did after observing mention of this company’s packaging method numerous times on various blogs and websites. I thought it would be a good idea to see firsthand what they were doing, then see if we could adopt anything they use that would benefit our customers.

We have several local customers who like to paint over photographs. Recently a new customer came in to pick up his canvas print. He told me he wanted to completely paint over the photo printed on canvas so that it looked like an original painting. His main question was if he should have ordered it stretched and mounted. Right away I told him I am usually surprised when artists order prints stretched and mounted they plan to paint on unless they are only applying a few highlights and embellishments. I said while there is nothing preventing a person from doing so, they would want to be aware of a few things before choosing if it should be mounted or not.

Our calibration print is a special 8×10 print you can order which allows you to adjust your monitor to try to match the print. Once you have done this and start working on your images on your computer you will be working on an image which is more closely aligned to industry color standards versus. While you can order this print on most of the media types we offer, there is no need to order more than one since colors print on all fairly consistent on all of them. Sure you will see some slight differences if you ordered more than one calibration print and on different papers but don’t use the calibration print to determine what media type is best to print your images. For that we recommend printing some of your actual work on the different papers and see which either sells the best or you like most. The calibration print is mainly to try to bring your monitor into a state which is closer to the standards at which we we print.

Our upcoming Archival Canvas Paper is a bright white matte paper which will be available within a few more days. This new paper is the same but texturized version of our popular Archival Matte Paper.

Canvas is a funny thing when it comes to printing. Over the years we have learned a lot about printing on this once hard to print on substrate. I say it was once hard to print on because your typical art supply store canvas is not able to receive inks well so canvas had to be made that could allow for photo quality reproductions. the means of printing on canvas we use today is relatively new. A bit over a decade ago when FinerWorks was started, canvas printing was still in the infancy stages with only a handful of suppliers offering good quality canvas for printing on to directly. Most notably was the major manufacturers such as HP and Epson which were starting to take the visual arts printing industry by storm with their newer and more capable large format printers. Photographers loved it because it made printing their photos on canvas easier and artist loved it because it opened up a new avenue for them to offer prints which looked closer to originals. But during that time there was little support on how to print on this particular media since few people had a whole lot of experience with it. This meant a hefty learning curve when it came to producing a canvas print ready to hang. But generally printing on canvas now days is no different than printing on any fine art media or photo stock. But when precision in printing is important, printing on a more dynamic media like canvas it does not hurt to be aware of how it is also different. Below I am going to share with you 10 points which may provide a better understanding on how to prepare your image and what to expect.

Both online and offline we always seem to be talking about what happens when images are too dark or not being properly color balanced but we don’t talk enough about overexposed images. Overexposed images are not only due to slower shutter speeds of a camera but also because the image was made too bright in both the dark and lighter areas. For art reproductions this can impact everything from how visible are the individual brush strokes to the ability to discern an underlying canvas texture. For photographers it simply means a less detailed photograph.

Today I’m going to show you how to soft proof your images through Photoshop. Why is soft proofing important? Simply put, soft proofing your images before having them printed is a great way to simulate how they will appear based on specific printer and paper combination. In the long run it will save you both time and money.