Shopping for new canvas printer to replace / supplement existing HPZ6100 - advice?

[RoCo]

Hi everyone,
We have an artist client we've been working with for several years who has been happy with our canvas prints from a old HP Z6100. He's been ordering 100 at a pop for a while, but recently placed an extremely large order for a few thousand. Great news for us and we're very excited, but it also creates a bit of a dilemma:

Do we buy one of the new HP Z-series photo printers to maintain the consistency / look that he's accustomed to or "look to the future" with a new HP latex 360 that would also take over for our aging (though still quite capable Roland SC-545EX print/cut?

I have some experience with the HP latex 360 and that would be my vote, my only hesitation is how different the latex ink will look on canvas as compared to the Z6100 inks. Plus, he may well be fine with any differences in appearance.

Any thoughts and input is appreciated - thanks!

 

[danno]

Why not take a print for this customer and test it on the new hp 360 and let him help be the judge. If you are happy and he is happy, then everybody is happy.

 

[Andriy]

If you have a lot of fine detail in his canvas prints then I would just get the 6800 to go with it, L360s have this graininess when you have something very small (but then again it is canvas with its own texture).
If it's a generalized image that you are stepping away from then latex will work I personally have some color consistency issues with my 360 printers but nobody else seems to.

 

[RoCo]

Why not take a print for this customer and test it on the new hp 360 and let him help be the judge. If you are happy and he is happy, then everybody is happy.

That's actually what we're going to do, and let the client decide. I guess I was more immediately curious as to the difference between what the Z6100 ink looks like on the canvas when side-by-side with the latex and if anyone had any experience with that (as in is it more vibrant? is color matching going to be an issue? things like that). I worked with a 360 previously but that was at a former employer and we didn't print on canvas there.

 

[P Wagner]

I would not expect there to be significant differences in gamut potential between the Z6100 and Latex 360 for canvas print applications. While the Z6100 has 8 inks, it is still truly a CMYK printer, as is the case with the HP Latex machines.

Any time you are getting into proofing situations (trying to make one device mimic the output of a different device), particularly with different ink chemistries, the waters can get fairly deep quickly, so I would agree with the suggestion made above to show the customer examples of output from the Latex unit on canvas medias before proceeding.

Towards that end, there is a very nice hard-copy book that HP has produced for the canvas print market. There were copies in the HP booth at SGIA, and the HP Alpharetta facility should have a supply too. The book shows a series of canvas prints on one page, each one output onto a different media product made by varying media manufacturers, with a photograph of the actual framed and finished canvas hanging on the wall on the facing page. This is to help designers and others to better understand the capabilities of HP Latex. There is a second such book on wall coverings. I will post an image of the books' covers tomorrow.

With these tools, delivered in conjunction with the cloud-based HP WallArt collaboration tool, HP is truly raising the bar for custom art reproduction, decor and wall coverings, using digital print fabrication.

Paul

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

You will have a lot more capabilities with the 360 and it prints canvas amazing. No missed spots or undried ink.

 

[P Wagner]

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, here are photos of the hard copy books that HP has created for Canvas prints and the wall coverings market opportunities. They are terrific tools for market development activities to help drive sales of these types of products. I probably don't need to add that these are available for users of the various models of HP Latex printers (but I will).

Paul