Protecting your print

It’s a scary world for an inkjet print, full of ultraviolet radiation,  condensation, oxidation… not to mention the sticky fingers of 6-year-olds. And though locking your prints away in a dark, vacuum sealed chamber might be tempting, there are  methods to protect your beloved prints that don’t involve hiding them from the world.

But, can you both protect and display your work without compromising its unique look and feel?

The answer is yes… if you take care to choose a method that enhances (or at least doesn’t detract from) the characteristics of the print.

Don’t make a solution into a problem

For example, do you use a matte or glossy paper?  That’s important, as most strategies for protecting a print are going to affect its reflective characteristics.  So you’ll need to be sure to use the right coating for the job. While the added shininess of a glossy coating may not be noticeable on a high-gloss paper, it can make a major difference in the appearance of a matte or semi-matte one.  And vice versa–a matte fixative can dull the shine right off of a glossy print.

Change in reflectivity is just one of many potential downfalls you may run into when adding a layer of protection to your output.  Texture may be reduced or eliminated by the addition of a sealant.  And other unique characteristics, like the ultra-contrast of metallic papers or the silver gelatin look of some fiber papers may take a hit as well.

In almost all cases there will be some impact on the perceived color vibrancy and density of the print due to the above mentioned change in reflectivity or because of a tint inherent in the coating. You may find you like the change–many do.  Blacks can look blacker, contrasts more deep, colors more vibrant–but its important that you are aware that these “enhancements” will occur.

But wait, there’s more! Some liquid sealants may dampen the paper enough to cause it to visibly warp. And  it’s not unheard of for coatings to yellow or crack over time.  In fact, while many coatings claim to extend the longevity of the print, keep in mind that often these are just claims with not much in the way of empirical data to back them up.

Oh, and some sealants stink.  Literally.  Its important to apply them in a well ventilated room and give the print plenty of time to air out.  Even then, some people have complained about a chemical smell permanently infusing their prints after coating.

Last but not least–a seemingly dry print must be given at least several days or even weeks before sealing or framing to “out gas”.  Sealing or framing the print prematurely is a sure way to do the opposite of protecting it as trapped moisture and harmful gases cause it to fade, yellow or warp.

With all of these factors to consider you may well decide not to take additional steps to protect your prints.  After all–today’s pigment inks (such as those used by Epson Stylus printers) are water resistant and fade resistant–in a “normal” indoors environment they can be expected to last without extensive fading for 80 years or more–at least that’s what the simulations tell us (No inkjet prints are that old yet).   And that may be true.  However, if your prints will be outdoors (or close enough to a door or window to receive weather effects), in direct sunlight or exposed to physical handling then the advantages of some form of coating may outweigh the pitfalls. With a little research, depending on the method of protection, you can make your print significantly more waterproof, UV proof…even 6 year old finger proof.

Evening it out

Even if protection or extending the life of your print into the next century isn’t a concern for you, there is one more thing to consider:  Pretty much any coating will reduce or eliminate gloss differential and bronzing. Gloss differential is what happens when there’s a clear difference between the “inked” area of a print and the areas that received no ink.  Viewed at an angle, you’ll see the inked areas have a different  reflective quality while the non-inked areas of a print show a different glossiness.  Bronzing is a  phenomenon in which the light reflective characteristics of the inks cause a golden “oil on water” sheen to the print when looked at an angle.  Both these phenomenon are tamed with virtually any kind of protective coating as they will even out the reflective characteristics of the print.

Choose your armor

So, now that we’ve discussed the pros and cons…just what are the methods of protection out there?  Well–there’s a lot of them, running the gamut from expensive lamination systems to hairspray.  While this is by no means a comprehensive list, here’s the main categories of options you’ll find:

Glass/Plastic Framing

It might seem overly obvious, but framing a print behind glass (or clear plastic) is a simple and effective method of offering protection to your prints. Framing protects from sunlight (if you use UV filtering glass) and, though not airtight, it does offer some measure of protection from environmental dangers like moisture and oxidation.  Viewed strictly for its protective characteristics alone, though,  it is usually the most expensive option, and though a nice frame will often enhance the print when displayed it will also add greatly to the storage requirements when it isn’t hanging on a wall.

Liquid coatings

There’s a dizzying range of methods and terms used in this category (fixative, shellac, lacquer, varnish, clear coat, acrylic coat, sealant, UV spray and “liquid laminates” to name a few) but all share the basic idea of a liquid applied to the surface of the print via brush, roller, aerosol spray can or spray gun that will dry to some kind of protective barrier.  While there are lots of liquid coatings specially formulated for inkjet output, many have also reported good results with more traditional products like those typically used for arts and crafts or woodworking applications. In fact, if you’ve ever read internet forums devoted to inkjet printing you know that experimentation is quite common when it comes to finding the perfect coating—pretty much any thing that can be sprayed on to a print has been… though not always with the intended results.

For applying a liquid coating, rolling and brushing are typically the most cost effective–especially when working with larger prints. Achieving an even coat is easy with a little practice but care must always be taken to avoid brush marks and air bubbles.  Aerosol spraying may be a more convenient option for smaller prints but more product may be required to achieve the same coverage as brushing/rolling. And spraying requires more care in maintaining proper ventilation in your work area. An HVLP (high-volume, low pressure) spray gun is perhaps the best, but most expensive,  method for higher volume applications as it provides efficient, even coverage on large and small prints with very little waste.

Most liquid coatings will be water, solvent or oil based.  Water based coatings can cause smearing on non-water resistant inks and some solvents may react badly with some paper coatings, so be careful.  A test application is always recommended.

Lacquers and Varnishes are perhaps the two terms you’ll see most often in this category. Lacquers tend to be thinner and faster drying then varnishes, but are more flammable so proper precautions must be taken when applying.  Lacquers are solvent or water based, Varnishes are oil and resin.

Lamination

In lamination a clear plastic sheet is fixed to the print with an adhesive. The normal lamination process uses heat to activate the adhesive and create the bond between a top and bottom laminate, with the print “pouched” between. But the high temperatures needed may in some cases harm the print.  That’s why “cold lamination” is often used for inkjet output.  In cold lamination, the print along with an adhesive backed plastic sheet are fed between two rollers which apply pressure to the two, sealing just the face of the print and the single laminate sheet together.  There are a variety of both hot and cold laminators (priced anywhere from the low hundreds to high thousands)  suitable for inkjet prints.  (Remember when pricing a laminator that the laminate material itself is a factor–some can, inch for inch, rival the cost of the paper).

Lamination has the advantage of ease of application and durability.  Laminating gives a more “plastic” feel to the print however, and may not be desirable for fine art prints.  Unlike liquid coatings, off-size prints will need to be trimmed of excess material once laminated.

Calibration and Soft Proofing

At this point it’s probably a good idea to put in  a quick word about printer profiles and paper coatings. Since paper profiles are in almost all cases NOT made on papers with protective coatings applied, if the protection you choose does change the tint or density of your prints in a significant manner it can be tricky to compensate for the change when creating or editing your images. One workaround is to simply create a soft proof of the coating’s effects in Photoshop via an adjustment layer.  The basics are:  First, make sure you are getting a good screen to print match without the coating applied (using your printer/paper profile via the normal View-Proof Setup methods within Photoshop). Now, coat the print, let it dry, and hold it next to the computer screen while Photoshop displays the same image as a soft proof.  Create an adjustment layer in Photoshop and use its controls to match the tint or density.  Now, when you are correcting images that you will be printing and coating, you can activate the adjustment layer to see how the coating will affect it.  Make sure not to save the adjustment layer with the image – the adjustment layer is just for seeing the change the coating will make so you can correct for it!

Products

To close off, here’s a very brief and very far from comprehensive list of liquid coating products that you might see out there.  Remember–ColorByte is not in the business of print protection and we aren’t recommending any of these. We’re just listing some well known popular names of coating products you may want to put into Google as a jumping off point in your search for that perfect print protection.

• Breathing Color Glamor and Timeless coatings
• Lyson Print Guard
• Clearstar ClearShield and ClearJet Products
• Bulldog Ultra Coating
• Krylon Crystal and UV Clear
• Premier Art Print Shield
• Superfrog Frog Juice

Know of something not mentioned here?  Let us know in comments!

Well, that’s it for this overview. Whether you decide to armor your inkjet output against the elements or let them meet the world au natural we hope this has been an informative look into the available options you have when it’s time to expose  your precious prints to the cold, hard world.

New Paper From Innova

There is an exciting new paper arriving soon from Innova. The official name is Innova FibaPrint Warm Cotton Gloss. The market announcement will come at this years WPPI convention in Las Vegas. US shipment should begin the week of February 20th.

FibaPrint Warm Cotton Gloss is a 100% cotton paper. It contains no optical Brighteners (OBA) in the base or in the papers coatings. It has a total weight of 335 gsm (grams per square meter) which will give the paper a substantial feel without being too stiff.

Here is what Fine Art Photographer Pete Myers has to say about this new paper.

“The surface quality of the Innova rag-based paper is just stunning. Surface smoothness has everything to do with the fidelity of the final print, resolution and gradation. You simply cannot make a great print without a great surface, and to have a great surface based on rag is extremely difficult to do. The bottom line is that this will become my paper of choice for the production of my fine art prints. Iryna at Colorbyte did an outstanding job with the ImagePrint calibrations for the new Innova product.”

The base has been made as smooth as possible and the ink receptive layer is Innova’s latest generation technology.

US Roll sizes will be 17”, 24”, 36”, 44” and 60”. Cut sheet sizes will be available in 8.5 x 11, 11 x 17, 13 x 19, and 17 x 22.

David Williams at Innova has been kind enough to offer to send our customers a sample of this new paper once it’s available. If you are interested please email David at:   davidw@innovaart.com.

JVH Digital Festival

Once a year, a very special printing festival takes place in the Northwest.  Hosted by John Harrington, owner of our Seattle dealer JVH, the JVH Digital Festival is a free event you don’t want to miss if you are near the Washington state area (or even if you’re not). We’ve made the long trek from Tampa, Florida ourselves on many occasions and have always had a great time.

This year, in addition to meeting experts from industry leading companies such as Epson, Canon, Seal/Neschen, EFI, Microsoft, Adobe, Chromix, Premier Imaging and of course, ColorByte, there will be an optional Large-Format digital printing workshop offered on March 20th (additional fee required) as well as John’s famous Digital Print Contest (now in its 8th year!)

Happy New Year from all of us at ColorByte!

You may have noticed the blog has been rather quiet for the last couple months, and for good reason: ImagePrint 9 was in the final stages of development and it was all hands on deck to get it finished.  On Dec.16, the new version was released simultaneously for both Mac and Windows platforms and it has proven to be the most successful launch in the 20 year history of our company.

What makes any release successful is feedback from our users and we encourage anyone with a suggestion or idea on improving ImagePrint to let us know about it.  We really do take your input into account when planning for the future.  And remember, ImagePrintToday is also open to suggestions.  If there is a topic you’d like us to cover, please let us know about it.  We’re always looking for blog ideas.

If you haven’t stopped by to see our new web site, please do.  A lot of effort went into making www.colorbytesoftware.com  more modern and information based.  And be sure to check out our new tutorial section where we cover most ImagePrint features with a short video that will give you a better insight in to how version 9 works.

Now that the dust as settled we plan to get back to regular updates here at ImagePrintToday.  So stay tuned for lots of informative articles, showcases of talented users, information on gallery openings and upcoming workshops and the latest news about industry events that ColorByte will be participating in.

Finally, as we all get rolling into 2012, we want to say thanks to all our users and wish you the happiest of new years.  Here at ColorByte we look forward to it being one of our best yet!

Save the Date: Shoot-NYC

Shoot-NYC, the annual professional forum held by industry leaders broncolor and Hasselblad is back, with exciting new photographic forums and live shooting sets that incorporate the latest photographic technology.

By attending Shoot-NYC, you will learn from top industry professionals. Educational seminars will cover topics that range from reproduction, fashion and commercial photography, to the ever-changing business of photography.

Hands-on demonstrations will encompass advanced lighting techniques, as well as pre and post-production, crossover lighting (still and video), and video production lighting. In addition, one can take a tour of the gallery of finalists from the Hasselblad Masters Exhibition, which will make its 2011 U.S. debut at Shoot-NYC.

Learn how to harness your talents to face the ever-changing photographic business.

The Value of a Print

I recently heard about an old photograph of General Robert E. Lee that sold at an auction not long ago for $23,000.  The photo ended up at Goodwill in a box with other things that are sold by the pound. By chance a Goodwill worker came across it and recognized the subject.  Since Lee lived in the 19th century and not too many photographs existed at the time, the worker thought it might be valuable.  And he was right.  The photo fetched $23,000 on the Goodwill auction site.

In this day of digital photography with CDs, DVDs and hard drives loaded with image files, that got me to thinking,  just what is it that gives an image (or any art for that matter) its value?  And I’m not just talking about monetary value, but emotional value as well–the kind of value that can reach across time.

To the artist that creates the work, value may seem an abstract thing, something that’s inherent in the work regardless of its final form.  But to anyone else the media matters.  It might be a piece of film, a computer screen or an inkjet print, but whatever “delivery method” is used for the art will have an undeniable effect on its value.

Which leads (as often seems to be the case on this blog) to the subject of inkjet printing.  Specifically, how printing should not be considered a separate procedure to be done once the “art part” is finished, but rather it should be seen as an integral part of the creative process itself.  Editing, cropping, picking just the right paper–all have consequences.  All enhance, or detract from the final work.  All affect its “value”.  Admittedly, not all images (even very good ones) are suited for printed output.  Yet all too often for those that are that final step of rendering the image to paper, of “finishing it”, is never taken.

It wasn’t always that way.  In fact, not too long ago creating a physical print was absolutely necessary in order to see the fruits of your photographic work.  But it’s all too easy these days to leave even your very best images in a kind of limbo on your hard drive.  After all, you can view it on screen — isn’t that enough?  Not for me.  Until I’ve put that great image on just the right paper–until I’ve created something I can hold or hang, something I can pass to others, something that will last–it just doesn’t feel complete.  It hasn’t achieved its full value.

Of course, printed images take up a bit more space than they do on a hard drive, and while it would be nice if we all had endless locations to display them if you’re like me you ran out of wall space a long time ago.  That’s why I feel that proper storage is imperative for any serious photographer.  And by proper storage, I don’t mean big hard drives.  No, a system of museum boxes and portfolios are what’s needed here, something that offer protection as well as ease-of-access to your print-worthy work. (Just remember to let those prints off-gas before putting tissue paper over them and storing them away).  Storing my photographs in a organized fashion allows me to keep a rotating selection of prints around as conversation pieces (and if I get really energetic I might even make a coffee table book–which is a whole topic on its own and one possibly worth exploring later.) But the point is, I make sure I have safe, convenient, logical storage for my prints.

Who knows?  I could be wrong about the value of always printing your best work.  Maybe years from now some raw file or jpeg of mine will be discovered in a box of sd cards (if old enough hardware to access them can be located) and some shot I made may transcend time to touch someone–or make them a lot of money.    But I highly doubt it.

For my money–it’s the images I’ve freed from the computer drive and shared with the world that have the real chance to stand the test of time.  It’s those  finished work, my prints, that really show their full value.

ImagePrint 9.0 Spotlight – Improved Narrow Gamut Toning

In addition to the introduction of Wide Gamut toning, ImagePrint 9.0 also greatly enhances its already existing black and white “Narrow Gamut” toning abilities. (This type of toning refers to adding relatively subtle casts to achieve effects such as selenium or sepia toned prints). Here’s a brief overview of the changes.

ImagePrint’s narrow gamut toning was the first introduced to inkjet printers and is still the industry standard due to its ability to “split tones” based on the highlight/shadow areas of the image and then reproduce those tones with advanced inking methods that eliminate undesired casts due to changes in print viewing conditions.

ImagePrint 9.0 ups the ante yet again by adding the ability to specify the tone in not only the highlights and shadows but mid-tones as well.  That’s right–you’ll be able to individually adjust the narrow gamut tone in up to 4 distinct density ranges. Master-class black & white techniques previously only possible in the darkroom can now be reproduced right on your inkjet printer.

While we were at it we’ve also added contrast/boost controls right in the Narrow Gamut window allowing you to dynamically alter the density curve of the image as you adjust its tone.

Combined with ImagePrint’s amazing greyscale profiles, our narrow gamut image toning has long been the secret to success for hundreds of fine-art black and white photographers.  With the improved Narrow Gamut Toning capabilities of version 9 we think you’ll find that the tradition continues.

ImagePrint feature spotlight – The Profile Valet

One of the greatest strengths of ImagePrint has always been its state-of-the-art library of paper profiles.  But such a vast selection always came with a price: namely, finding the right profile for your paper  could be, well…kind of a pain.  Hard to decipher file names.  Cryptic quality, ink and light temperature choices.  External download managers.  You could easily spend more time figuring out which profile to use than it took to make the actual print.  ImagePrint 9 seeks to change all that with a unique and innovative approach to profile selection–the Profile Valet.  Here’s a peek at what to expect.

Papers, not profiles!

You don’t see an ICC profile name in big, bold letters on that box of new paper you just bought.  No, it’s the easy-to-read and descriptive name of the actual media itself that appears on the label.  So, when it’s time to pick the profile for that media why should you have to grapple with the jumble of abbreviations and confusing terms that make up a typical ICC/ICM profile’s name?

Well, with ImagePrint 9 you no longer have to.  The new Profile Valet contains a drop-down list of all of the papers we’ve profiled for your printer—not the profiles—the papers.  Just pick the paper by name (just like it reads on the box), choose a few basic options like color vs grayscale, and we’ll do the rest.

Of course, if you prefer the old way of choosing profiles, Choose by profile name will still be available.  But for most people the Profile Valet will take the pain out of selecting the right profile and will let you spend less time fiddling with profiles and more time actually using them to produce amazing prints.

Immediate access

In the past, if you didn’t have a particular paper profile you would have to download it from our online profile repository.  And while our Profile Manager utility simplified the task of getting and installing the right profile, it still meant opening a separate program, wading through lists of available profiles, and then choosing and downloading the correct one for your particular printer, paper and output needs.

What’s more—you could never be sure  if we even had the profile you needed to get until you went through the process of logging in to check.

With ImagePrint 9 and the Profile Valet you’re always up to date.  Each time the software launches, it synchronizes its list of available profiles for your printer with our online profile repository so you see a complete list right there in the Profile Valet’s  selection window.  And if the paper you choose requires a profile that  isn’t already on your computer it’s automatically downloaded from the repository and installed — all without ever having to leave or restart ImagePrint!

Favorites

Most people have a few papers they use over and over, but re-choosing the same profile and its associated settings each time you switch media can be a time-consuming, repetitious chore.  That’s why with ImagePrint 9 we’ve added the ability to save the currently selected profile along with your other color management choices as a Favorite.  Once added as a Favorite you can quickly choose it from the Favorites window.

ImagePrint 9 Feature Spotlight – The Dashboard and Image Strip

Easier, Smaller, Faster

Improving ease-of-use has been a major focus of ImagePrint 9.0 and from the start we knew that a primary goal had to be streamlining the interface. The truth is, while ImagePrint has an amazing set of features, when it comes to actually making a print only a relatively few settings come into play. But getting to those settings has often meant navigating through several menu choices and opening multiple windows. Did you pick the right printer profile? Is the page size correct? Are you set for Roll? With so many places to go it can be easy to forget something and get an incorrect print as a result. That’s where the Dashboard  comes in.

The Dashboard puts all the features essential to making a print together in one place, organized into an easily accessible and logical menu structure. Gone are the days of wading through sub menus to get to commonly used settings. The menu choices are laid out in a top to bottom format that takes you naturally through all the steps needed to make a print, and the currently selected options are always visible at a glance. The end result? A much less cluttered interface and a greatly reduced likelihood of making a mistake.

We’ve also simplified the printing process itself. Once your images are positioned on the page (and after a quick glance at the Dashboard to confirm your settings) it just takes a single click to send a job to the printer. No more having to go into another window to confirm final selections just to have to click print again.

With fewer windows on the screen the available working space area is naturally increased. But we went a step further. By incorporating folder navigation into the new menus we were able to redesign the file browser into a much more efficient and less obtrusive tool…the new Image Strip.

Just like the File Browser the Image Strip offers thumbnails of your images which can be dragged or double-clicked to place them in the current layout. But the Image Strip sports a much leaner interface and allows docking both vertically or horizontally into the ImagePrint main window. You can also choose to run the Image Strip in non-docked mode and expand it to display more images or change the size of the thumbnails shown. Finally, we’ve added a Favorites tab to store your most frequently accessed folder locations for easy navigation.

Together, these tools represent the biggest ever change to ImagePrint’s user interface. With its more intuitive and logical organization we think you will find ImagePrint 9 to be the easiest to use version yet!

ImagePrint 9 Feature Spotlight – Shuffle

Continuing our series of spotlights on what’s coming up in ImagePrint 9, this week we take a closer look at Shuffle and see how picking the best layout is not always as simple as it may seem.

Layout optimization – the possibilities are (nearly) endless

Arranging multiple images on a page in the most paper-saving way possible sounds easy on the surface.  Even a reasonably fast computer these days is capable of billions of instructions per second, so how long can it possibly take to analyze, say, 20 images on a page to determine the arrangement that saves the most media?

Turns out, it can take a while–a long while.  Especially when you consider images of different sizes and add in the option of rotating the images 90 degrees.  For instance,  in the case of 10 images arranged in a simple row there are 3,628,800 combinations.  Not too bad, until you figure in the ability to rotate  images.  Then it jumps to over 3.5 billion.  For 20 images that number increases to a staggering 2.55108266 x 10^24 combinations (that’s 2.5 followed by 24 zeroes).  Even for very fast computers it won’t take too many images before you are talking hours, days, weeks or longer to calculate all the different layouts.   Unless you’re willing to wait a very long time to save a few inches of paper, you probably need a faster method.

Do the shuffle

ImagePrint 9′s new Shuffle feature uses a combination of algorithms  to determine the most promising arrangements to calculate first. It then goes about testing these potential layouts, displaying  the best its found so far as it goes. At any time in the process you can  make the call to go ahead and send that current winner  to the  printer or keep waiting for something better to come along.   To make your decision easier,  it shows you how much paper you’ve saved compared to the original layout at the bottom of the screen.

We’ve found that within 30 seconds Shuffle has usually zeroed  in on a layout  that’s within five percentage points of the best possible.  Give it a couple of minutes and you’ll likely be within 1 percent, though results may vary depending on size of the images and page.

If you don’t want to be tied to the screen while shuffle does it’s thing,  just click the “Shuffle and Print” button and specify a duration. When the allotted time is up, ImagePrint will automatically print the best layout it’s found up to that point.

More work or more media?

One pitfall of laying images out in the most media-stingy way possible is that you can end up with a final print that looks like a jigsaw puzzle of  nested images.  Separating such a layout can require a lot of manual, right-angled scissors work, so if  you need to make straight across cuts you’ll want to make sure “horizontal cut lines” is enabled.  This mode ensures that Shuffle arranges the images in rows with clear horizontal cut-channels between them for easy cutting.  While this mode will usually result in less media being saved it can be invaluable to those who don’t want to cut out each image by hand.

Availability

Combined with ImagePrint’s Inked Area Only feature (which ensures the printer only outputs paper as far as the last image on the page)  Shuffle is a tool that anyone who prints multiple images on roll paper can take advantage of–anyone who gets ImagePrint 9, that is.   Make sure to give it a try when it becomes available–you may find it saves you paper, and money,  with every print.