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Home::Entertainment
Canvas Printing
Author : Peter Horner
Copyright 2006 Peter Horner
Canvas is the most popular of all art media. Fine art
reproductions, contemporary art, abstract art, original
paintings and digital photos can be turned into canvas prints.
Printing on fine art materials such as canvas and watercolour
papers is often referred to as Giclee. The French term "Giclée"
(pronounced zhee-clay) means to spray or squirt, which is how an
inkjet printer works. However, it is not the same as a standard
desktop inkjet printer, and is much larger at over a meter wide.
Canvas prints created using the giclee printing process provide
better colour accuracy than other means of reproduction to
satisfy the uncompromising print quality pursued by the worlds
leading artists and photographers in creating masterpieces.
Prints are created using professional 8 or 12 colour ink-jet
printers made by manufactures such as Epson and Hewlett-Packard.
Special light-fast inks are used, which will remain true for up
to 75 years. These printers are capable of producing incredibly
detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets.
Using rolls of canvas, printers can produce prints up to 44" in
width and unlimited length. Even artists can have a hard time
telling the original from the copy when printed at a high
resolution of 2880 dpi.
Canvas printing offer artists and photographers many advantages.
If you're an artist you'll put a lot of time and effort into a
painting and experience joy selling it, but when it's sold you
have to start all over again. Digitally archiving images allows
artists to sell images over and over again, at a reduced price
and share art works with many people. Digitally archiving images
will also means that your originals will not deteriorate in
quality as films and negatives do. Giclee printing has also
become popular with photographers who are applying their
pictures to stretched canvas and other digital art papers to
give images a whole new quality. Photographers find the soft,
painterly quality of giclee printed photographs on canvas to be
very appealing. Subtle colours and details in photos can be
reproduced without losing them as you would with traditional
photographic glossy prints. Digital images can also be
reproduced to any size and onto other forms of media using
giclee printing.
Significant advances in giclee inks have resulted in prints with
broader, more saturated colour ranges and longevity. Epson are
one manufacturer of giclee inks who make light fastness claims
that their UltraChrome pigment based inks last in excess of 75
years. Epson's pigment based inks use eight individual colours,
including black (photo or matte), light black, cyan, light cyan,
magenta, light magenta, and yellow. A common misconception is
that all inkjet inks are archival inks. Pigment-based inks last
a lot longer than dye-based. Even special UV stable dye inks
used for fine art may fade as quickly as 13 years. Under the
right conditions new dye-based inks on the market may last as
long as 60 years, but there is significant loss of colour range
and they only provide longevity on certain print medias. There
are reputable companies offering art reproduction using inks
that will fade in as little as a year, and unfortunately some of
these printers don't inform their customers. Its important that
consumers have all the information they can get, so that artists
and photographers can make an intelligent and informed decision,
and can be sure prints will last.
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