Printing Giclées.
First... |
For the Traditional Artist . . .
Similar to offset
lithograph, the Giclée print starts with a 35mm, 3"x4" or 4"x5"
transparency of the original painting by a professional photographer. The color
correctness of the transparency is critical to insure proper reproduction.
A high-resolution
scanner is used to capture the orginal painting's colors, hues, saturation,
brightness, tones, paint and canvas/paper texture. The image is than archived
onto an optical disk.
Suggestion: The
transparency should contain a gray strip and/or a color patch. This will help
the scanner and the scanner operator to compare the highlights and the shadows
within your painting to a known set of values.
or
For the Digital Artist . . .
For the Digital artist, we accept your creative
art on optical disk (128, 512 or 1.2 gig), ZIP or CD. Image format should be
RGB in either TIFF or PIC. Image size at 300 dpi and at either 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2
of the final image size to be printed.
Calibrating of your monitor to the
proof print
You spent hours
creating the perfect image. The next step is to print a proof on your desktop
RGB (red, green and blue) printer. You decide to make an adjustment in the
colors and then another proof is printed. Finally the image meets with your
approval.
You copy the
image onto a Zip or CD and send it to the commercial printer for a proof before
printing the final image. A week later you receive an envelope from the printer
containing their proof, then in sets reality.
You were
expecting the printer's CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) proof to match
your RGB monitor and RGB proof. They do not match - why? The colors sure look
good on your RGB monitor.
The problem and answer are the same -
calibration. Calibrating and maintaining the colors you see on your RGB monitor
to your RGB proof and than to the final printed CMYK image is the hardest
hurdle to overcome.
I will not attempt to explain
color calibration on this web site. There is no sense in re-inventing the wheel
or in this case the color wheel. I highly recommend you review a set of
tutorials designed by color expert Andrew Rodney at
www.digitaldog.net
|