Giclee printing... Where to begin

[bob]

...bilge mercifully deleted...

Really not sure how you still don't get business basics. These aren't "spiritual connections", they're internationally enforced laws. Specifically you should read section 106 of the copyright Act of 1976.

Yes, it's a real pity that I don't understand business basics. Perhaps if I did I might be able to buy 20 of you as opposed to the 10 of you I could buy right now. Perhaps then it might be possible to use all of you to form a functional idiot marching band.

Regardless of my business acumen or lack of it, what, exactly, do copyright laws, and or all of them, have to to with charging ridiculous prices for something?

 

[signmeup]

"idiot marching band".... love it!

Is it your intention to create artwork or print customer supplied photos Colin? I was under the impression it was the later. If so, the prices this photographer that fell into the conversation is able to get seems irrelevent.

Being able to get $775 for a nicely exposed snapshot printed to canvas is quite impressive BTW.

 

[Colin]

Is your intention to create artwork or print customer supplied photos Colin?

Customer supplied photos, and artist's work which has been professionally photographed and made into a workable electronic file. I could easily attempt to print and sell some of my own photos, but I imagine that the market is flooded, and the profit I would see would not be worth it given the effort to get it sold - especially if trying to sell it through a store where they want 50%. *shrug*

 

[signswi]

Yes, it's a real pity that I don't understand business basics. Perhaps if I did I might be able to buy 20 of you as opposed to the 10 of you I could buy right now. Perhaps then it might be possible to use all of you to form a functional idiot marching band.

Regardless of my business acumen or lack of it, what, exactly, do copyright laws, and or all of them, have to to with charging ridiculous prices for something?

Again, it's only ridiculous if the market doesn't support it. Your snapshot judgement of the price is meaningless. I think paying $2600000 for a Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 is ridiculous but that doesn't make the price ridiculous, as it's set to the market--most of which is intellectual property and market valuation (aka perceived value), not pure product cost valuation. If you can't grok what copyright laws have to do with valuation I'm not sure what to say. There's a minimum level of understanding required for decent discourse and you're not meeting it.

Congrats on being "able to buy me 10 times over" as if that was possible. Last response to you, this is not a useful derail. Again.

 

[Jgentry]

Customer supplied photos, and artist's work which has been professionally photographed and made into a workable electronic file. I could easily attempt to print and sell some of my own photos, but I imagine that the market is flooded, and the profit I would see would not be worth it given the effort to get it sold - especially if trying to sell it through a store where they want 50%. *shrug*

To succeed in the art world you need to be able to speak the language a little. You also need to know your stuff. Custom profiles are a must. A fully profiled workflow is a must, or else you will spend way too much time on correction in PS.

The gorilla in the room is image capture. 4x5 camera, digital scan back from Betterlight or Phase One, HID lighting, Zig-align to line up the 4x5 camera with the artwork, copy lens. To do it right it costs $...

You must capture the art to be serious about the business end.

 

[Colin]

@ Jgentry:

Yes, I am fully aware that I have limitations when it comes to all that, but I'm not totally in the dark either. I'm not targeting the high-end market, but when someone off the street supplies me with a (large enough) JPG photo that they want done on Canvas, but the horizon is crooked, the image needs a little lightening or darkening, and they'd like that big piece of lint removed from their shirt, or a mole removed, I can do all that stuff to produce an image that they'll be happy with. I think we forget that many (if not most) people don't have a clue how to do what we consider "basic" stuff.

Cheers

 

[Colin]

In addition:


I find that the photography and art communities are two different worlds. Photographers tend to be a bit more tech savvy and in my experience, artists tend to be luddites. Of course, every rule has exceptions, but this is what I've experienced.

 

[signswi]

@ Jgentry:

Yes, I am fully aware that I have limitations when it comes to all that, but I'm not totally in the dark either. I'm not targeting the high-end market, but when someone off the street supplies me with a (large enough) JPG photo that they want done on Canvas, but the horizon is crooked, the image needs a little lightening or darkening, and they'd like that big piece of lint removed from their shirt, or a mole removed, I can do all that stuff to produce an image that they'll be happy with. I think we forget that many (if not most) people don't have a clue how to do what we consider "basic" stuff.

Cheers

Have you seen these guys? They advertise like crazy. http://www.canvaspop.com/ I'm thinking that while your targeted market has some local value there might be more value partnering with local photography studios/photographers to supply their canvas prints. Your value prop. to them is that you're local and responsive to their needs, at a slightly higher price than online photo canvas mills. However without knowing the market research for your area I can't say for sure that's the best approach or not, but simply an idea to consider/pursue while you figure things out. There're also places that specialize in photo restoration, could hit them up as well as a B2B source if your city is large enough to have 1+ of those. The trick is being in that sweet spot where paying you slight markup is worth the service you provide but isn't enough money that they could hire employees and buy equipment to do it themselves. Tough but doable, it's the sweet spot many of the vendors on signs101 exist in.

 

[Colin]

Have you seen these guys? They advertise like crazy. http://www.canvaspop.com/

Hadn't heard of them, but they're considerably more expansive than the link I offered earlier.

 

[Jgentry]

Your going to want to learn to stretch canvas also. Gallery wraps and standard bars. Bit of a pain at times. You could refer your customers to a local frame shop.

 

[Colin]

Crap. Groupon.

 

[VinylLabs.com]

Crap. Groupon.

I had emailed some of the other coupon places for information, forgot about groupon.

 

[Rooster]

The gorilla in the room is image capture. 4x5 camera, digital scan back from Betterlight or Phase One, HID lighting, Zig-align to line up the 4x5 camera with the artwork, copy lens. To do it right it costs $...

You can't make a buck even with the betterlight backs these days. Not if somebody in your neck of the woods has a cruz scanner. They're knocking out full bed high res scans for $45 with the input profile. By the time you mount a piece of artwork, position the tri-pod, lights and get your zig-align done you've lost money before you even start the scan. If you have to mess around with polarizing filters, you're even deeper in the hole.

 

[signswi]

That's a relative statement, some museums are ditching their Cruse scanners and going back to their BetterLight setups. All sorts of issues with color, softness, etc. Of course here we're discussing commercial situations, not museums, but the point remains--they aren't an "industry killer" like they were so wildly exclaimed. The less flat the object is the more problems they have--I'd still love to play with one though. Fantastic for large documents and flatter canvases--does anyone know if they output proper RAW files yet?

 

[boxerbay]

I don't know how you guys do it, but if I take a picture (lets say 10mp) which is about 3000px wide (essentially 10inches @300dpi) If I scale it 300% in photoshop and print at 300dpi, or I resize it to 30 inches wide@ 150dpi and print, the 150dpi looks better, the 300DPI canvas print has resized artifacts around the corners. i printed my second canvas last night and it looked horrible. Still trying with these prints.

also, whats the best way to laminate them? what about textured laminate? (transparent gesso)

when you scaled it to 300% and saved at 300dpi you basically reduced the dpi to 100dpi. when you scale things in photoshop it tries to fill in those areas of your spread out pixel. photoshop does not do this well.

if the image is 3000 pixels wide the widest you can go without visible pixelation is 3000/72dpi = 41.6" max.

in PS - IMAGE>IMAGE SIZE>UNCHECK RESAMPLE IMAGE>SET RESOLUTION TO 72dpi. notice the pixel dimension do not change. SAVE your file as a .tiff, open in rip.

 

[Colin]

SAVE your file as a .tiff, open in rip.

As a JPG is already a "lossy" type file, how does it help it by saving it as a TIF?

 

[boxerbay]

As a JPG is already a "lossy" type file, how does it help it by saving it as a TIF?

just good habit to save as a tiff from photoshop.

tiff maintains the transparency so if my final composition is done in AI I still have transparent background off a cropped image.

my old seiko 64s with wasatch rip only read tiff, eps, and pdf files.

 

[Colin]

So if someone supplies me with a JPG (or I want to print one of my own JPG photos) I am best to print it as a TIF rather than a JPG?

 

[GAC05]

So if someone supplies me with a JPG (or I want to print one of my own JPG photos) I am best to print it as a TIF rather than a JPG?

I think this is correct.
Each time you edit & resave a jpg it looses a little more data even at 100% quality.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[boxerbay]

you can save as a jpg in PS just be sure to set quality to 12.

it is just my preference to work with tiff. those tiffs are part of a large composition.

it all depends on your workflow and what you are doing.

we get a lot of event posters. so we usually get photos and images we usually crop/extract from the background. then assemble it all in AI adding the the text, background, and whatever else. from AI we save as a pdf. fine text prints better out of a pdf than a flattened jpg file.

also if the client comes back at a later date i can use those same tiffs and design a brochure or flyer or business card. i dont like to crop/extract twice.