I am trying to reproduce some of my Polaroid transfer images for an upcoming art show. I am trying to make prints/reproductions of my work with the highest quality for the lowest price. There are so many methods. What would the order of quality be between a Canon 1000 color copy from an original, a giclee print, a color copy from a slide, a fiery output copy from a scanned image. What methods are people using? Thanks for any information.

-- Melinda Carvalho (mcarvalho@earthlink.net), June 09, 1999

Answers

Unfortunately the highest quality is almost never the lowest price. For a fine art show where people will hopefully be purchasing your work, your bigest concern should be longevity of the printed image. The only thing wose than having someone come back to you demanding a refund because their image faded in 2-3 months is developing a reputation for selling poor quality prints. The only methods that would be widely acceptable in the art market would be some sort of photographic reproduction (which unfortunately loses that warm art paper feel) or Giclee prints. Any color copy will fade and color shift relatively fast. A fiery (or cyclone) is just a computer link to a color copier. Desktop color prints are also subject to relatively quick fading, anywhere from 1 week to 1 year in my experience. While a year may seem like a long time, it's not acceptable in the art community.

I hope this helps, Dan

-- Dan Wayland (danw@riechesbaird.com), July 09, 1999.

Hello!

I have had great luck making fine art prints of my transfers scanning them with my Umax 1200S scanner and ptinting them on the same Arches Watercolor paper (coldpress) with an Epson Photo inkjet printer. The colors are great and you really cant see the dots with the newer 750 and 1200 printer. 3rd party companies also make archival ink sets you can use.

I was even able to fool my photo teacher. The give away it the copies are very flat, while my originals have some warping do to the wet process.

I highly recommend getting the 6 color Epson 750 or the larger 1200 printer. I've also had good luck making my copies 5x7.

Mac

-- Mac Legrandi (fontpro@usa.net), September 19, 1999.