Giclee Printing: How Artist Digitize Art for Reproduction

Oil painters, water color painters and those of us who do not have a digital copy but rather a hard copy of our image that we want to have reproduced as a canvas print, must give special attention to the way we digitize our image.

Many of my clients have started by sending me a digital copy of their image that they scanned on their mediocre scanner or maybe they took a picture of it with their point and shout. They tell me they want an 8×10 of it or a 16×20 and are content with the image quality, so I print it for them and they sell it. Then they call me back and tell me they want a 36×48 of it. It might of looked decent in the sixteen by twenty however their is a threshold in the print making world as artists that we should consider and maybe we are not even aware of it.

Lets give a scenario. A master oil painter paints a beautiful oil painting. Now he takes a picture of it with his moms new 5 mega pixel camera and has 50 limited edition 36×48 giclee prints made of it, and they all look ok. Why?

Here are some possible reasons. The lighting was not so good so the texture from the oil painting casting shadows that where picked up by the camera. The lens on the camera was a wide angle and it distorted the image on the end and because the resolving limitations of the camera the canvas prints had a tremendous amount of grain. While he may have been able to get a decent marketable print out of an 8×10 or 16×20 with price points under $150, this is an altogether different scene; the larger prints show the flaws of the equipment he used to digitize them. He is hard pressed to get the $400 to $800 he wanted for them and is embarrassed to even show them.

The cost of digitizing images with the right equipment is an investment per image.

With this in mind it is important to consider the market you are selling your art to and how large the image is going to be reproduced. Other considerations are how large is the hard copy that I am trying to reproduce and is it for personal use and not commercial.

Smaller hard copies that are photographs or water colors or otherwise flat in nature can be scanned on fine art scanners with resolving power.

One inexpensive way to digitize art that I have seen employed with success as a starting point, even with larger print making is with the use a of a 5d 12 mega pixel Canon digital camera, and a macro lens or prime 50 ml. Controlled lighting is also recommended. Multiple light sources can also be employed to fill shadows.This can sometimes be done by a friend or local photographer.

If you are looking for the next  level in digitizing your images the equipment that is used should be a Better Light Scan Back in connection with continues lighting. The equipment this companies makes is so good I have only ever seen one other equipment company rival them (Cruise Scanners) The one we employ is a 144 megapixel Model 6000-HS. In connection with this we use a continuous light source, utilizing daylight balanced UV filtered CMD lighting (polarized when needed)  A good friend once told me “Garbage In Garbage Out. Quality in Quality Out.”  Your reproductions can only look as good as the digital representation of the original.

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Tags: art scanning, artist, canvas prints, giclee, giclee printing, Photos on canvas, scanning art

1 Comment to Giclee Printing: How Artist Digitize Art for Reproduction

1. 

   I really liked seeing that setup at the end.

   I never really thought about how people recreate “art” pieces for print very interesting.
Nick Nieto on November 7th, 2008