Printing on canvas advice

[Leadbelly]

I have a Roland RF640 and have been asked many times if I can print photos onto canvas. I have always backed away from printing canvas as I believe the guys that do in most cases have to do a bit of work in photoshop to the customers photos, which in a lot of cases the customer is unaware, but just receives a good canvas back. I have no experience with photoshop whatsoever.

Getting a canvas media and profile is straight forward enough but dose the RF640 lend it's self good enough to do this kind of printing and in true terms will I have to learn how to tweak the images, and are there any other factors I have missed out?

 

[ams]

I have a VP-540i which is about 8 years old and it's a standard 4 color CMYK. I print on canvas and it turns out amazing. Ever heard of shutterfly? My wife is addicted to that website, however she won't buy canvas there anymore because my quality is much better. I get very clear images. It's even better with an over print.

Of course it depends on the type of canvas you use. Some are cheap and soak up the ink while others produce amazing results.

 

[oksigns]

Roland has a solvent canvas material I never bothered to try, but my thinking is, if I were to delve in to canvas prints, I better know how to stretch a frame and mount it properly. Processing artwork is only a small part of it, and I don't want to devote my time and energy in to that. So it is worth considering the whole gamut of skills if you are considering canvas printing, cause, from my experience, a lot of your off the street business would want a one stop shop type of solution.

 

[Leadbelly]

Thanks for your advice, I do buy digital canvas and frame rails and have made and stretched many canvases I have more or less mastered the art of corner folding and stapling, but here's the thing i have been using them to paint with not that I'm an artist in anyway shape of form but why buy them when I can make them cheaper through my sign supplies.

I have also tried to print some of my photo's but was very disappointed very dark when they should not have been, now I do have to say they were on my old 54inch machine, not that there was anything wrong with it I'm sure is was just me expecting just to rip and print from the jpeg file.

This gets back to my question are the guys that are printing onto canvas are they hitting something like PS first.

Just checked out shutterfly I was not aware of it and now going to look at what an over print is

I live way out in the country side on the west coast of Ireland I have to take my work to the customer so I have to get it right as word of mouth go's a long way here.

 

[bob]

...
I have also tried to print some of my photo's but was very disappointed very dark when they should not have been, now I do have to say they were on my old 54inch machine, not that there was anything wrong with it I'm sure is was just me expecting just to rip and print from the jpeg file....

If you set your bitmap rendering intent to 'Perceptual' and RIP and print an RGB jpg you should come close to what you see is what you get. Let your RIP deal with the RGB file, do not convert the image to CMYK. Your RIP will sort out an RGB image far better than any other software you possess. I do this all the time on canvas and most any other media. I'm seldom, if ever, disappointed.

 

[ams]

Thanks for your advice, I do buy digital canvas and frame rails and have made and stretched many canvases I have more or less mastered the art of corner folding and stapling, but here's the thing i have been using them to paint with not that I'm an artist in anyway shape of form but why buy them when I can make them cheaper through my sign supplies.

I have also tried to print some of my photo's but was very disappointed very dark when they should not have been, now I do have to say they were on my old 54inch machine, not that there was anything wrong with it I'm sure is was just me expecting just to rip and print from the jpeg file.

This gets back to my question are the guys that are printing onto canvas are they hitting something like PS first.

Just checked out shutterfly I was not aware of it and now going to look at what an over print is

I live way out in the country side on the west coast of Ireland I have to take my work to the customer so I have to get it right as word of mouth go's a long way here.

Use SEAL's true color monet canvas (or pure color). You can get a free 20" X 10 yd sample from them on their website.

 

[danno]

Use SEAL's true color monet canvas (or pure color). You can get a free 20" X 10 yd sample from them on their website.

I have used the monet canvas on HP 9000s and HP L26500. Can't wait to use it on my sii M-64.

 

[NateF]

Just a helpful tip - don't lose too much sleep trying to find a profile that works for the Monet canvas. We have a Roland VS-540i, but with a 7 color setup. Monet didn't have a profile for our ink setup, and we messed around (at their recommendation) with the roland canvas profiles for a while. Colors were always way off, especially the dark blacks. They came out with a bluish hue. I finally read somewhere to try generic banner profile, and believe it or not, that was the trick. Perfect prints every time! I still shake my head at all the time we wasted trying to "do it right".