| Which
methods will protect your giclée print, rather than further damage
them? varnish, clearcoat, sealant, UV inhibitor, spray lamination?
Every week artists ask for help to protect their inkjet giclée prints. Most artists and many photographers do not want film laminate on top of their images. Looks too plastic and artificial. This means you must use spray lamination or liquid lamination techniques.
So the FLAAR staff at the university did what professors do well, namely research on the theme of laminating fine art giclée and photographic prints. We looked at lacquer, clearcoat varnish, top coating, liquid lamination equipment, spray laminating equipment, UV resistant sealer, and varnish as transparent clear UV sealant to serve as a as moisture resistant layer.
A major problem was which varnish or lacquer would crack and turn yellow?
Other artists want to paint on top of their inkjet prints. Well this requires first preparing the inkjet surface (after it has been printed).
Professor Hellmuth speaks about all these matters in this new report. Dr Hellmuth received his PhD in art history after prior education and training at both Harvard and Yale. For the last several decades he has dedicated himself to improving photographic techniques for recording ancient Mayan art of Guatemala.
Now that he has moved into digital photography and wide format printing over the last six years, his center for digital imaging still works at museums in Central America.
An entire series of reports on giclée printing has been brought together by FLAAR. The newest addition is the coverage of liquid and spray lamination, especially the Lumina laminator. We will be updating this over the summer.
We will cover laminating equipment for photographs on our photography website. And to laminate signage, that is still another different kind of lamination that we cover on our large-format or wide-format printer sites: either liquid, such as with a Keundo, or with traditional film laminate.
Nicholas has an Iris 3047 giclée printer, two ColorSpan printers, several Epson's, several HP's, two Canon printers and a Mimaki JV4 to experiment with. Plus the entire art department is next door on the campus of Bowling Green State University. At the other university in Guatemala there are two museums on campus, so he has amassed considerable experience with art in the last several decades.
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| Liquid
Laminator at DPI tradeshow |
Most recently updated May 8, 2006.
Previously updated January 13, 2006, June 25, 2004. First posted Jan. 14, 2003.
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