Tips on which inkjet printers are good if you need museum quality photo-realistic wide format fine art giclée prints.

Comments are based on practical experience of actual wide format inkjet printers.In the summer of 2001 FLAAR was asked to prepare an exhibit of large format inkjet prints for the art museum on campus.

Over 400 people were expected for the opening night. They would be very critical.

The museum would be embarrassed if the prints were not top quality.

What inkjet printer should we select?

The members of the museum's Board of Directors made it clear they wanted the print quality to make viewers gasp.

So many people have asked for this report that we have turned it into a PDF downloadable file (via Adobe Acrobat). The roughly 7 page report is too long to put onto an Internet page on this web site. To obtain your copy, just go to the inquiry-survey form, let us know what questions you need answered about inkjet printers for photo-realistic prints and/or fine art giclée prints.

Our museum was so happy with the quality of the inkjet prints that they turned the exhibit into a permanent feature in the museum building.

There are two art museums on our Francisco Marroquin campus. One is a museum of Mayan archaeological art (Popol Vuh Museum); the other is a museum of indigenous native handicrafts such as hand-woven costumes (Ixchel Museum). Based on the success of the first exhibit at the Popol Vuh Museum, we are now planning a second exhibit at the other museum. Cruse GmbH is shipping a $97,000 digital reprographic copy stand scanner system to the FLAAR facility at Bowling Green State University. We will use this scanner to scan the textiles.

What wide format inkjet printer can handle the quality which the Cruse digital system can produce?

You notice that FLAAR works hard to ascertain what is the best equipment. We also understand the situation of beginners, hobbyists, and people whose budgets are modest. So if you have only $3,500 for a printer, we can also suggest one for you. Yes, we also have a 24" inkjet printer, indeed two of them. So for newbies as well as museum curators, for photographers and artists, we have prepared the tips, help, and reports to assist you. A $15,000 to $20,000 printer is needed for commercial production, but for home, hobby, or second business, you can achieve good results at $14,000 and less. We did not have a $65,000 Iris giclée printer for our museum. Sure, would have liked one, but we had to print the entire show of 60 prints 48" wide within the short space of a single month. Never would have achieved that with an Iris.

Due to the typical low museum budget, we had to employee students to do the printing, which implied teaching several total novices how to run the printer (they learned in less than an hour). What in the world kind of printer does museum quality that needs only 1 hour of training !

Due to all the new technology, the new inks, improved canvas, better water color paper, the quickest way we can update all the information is utilizing PDF format downloads. So we have an entire separate information system, all in Adobe Acrobat format. This is over and above what is on our web sites. These PDF reports are more recent, more frequently updated, and come to you in convenient chapter-by-chapter book format. Our university and our museum make this information available at no cost as a public service. After all, public education is the purpose of a museum and a university.