You
can print your own fine art, exhibit-quality, photo enlargements,
in-house, if you have a good wide format color printer with an
adequate RIP.
But,
if you are printing images that are grainy to begin with, such
as ancient ceramics, the dot pattern matches the grain pattern
of the thousand year old ceramics. This Encad wide format printer
is part of the FLAAR
museum program for the Museo Popol Vuh, on the campus of the
Universidad
Francisco Marroquin (Guatemala, Central America).
Since
Encad is the first printer that we had in-house first (before we moved
into fine art giclée and got a ColorSpan
and HP
DesignJet 5000), Encad is the printer that we show here. The
new Encad printers are twice as good, that's right, the 600 dpi
Encad 700-series and Encad 850-series are productive workhorses
for any sign shop. Downside is the grainy, dotty pattern of the
printing. The obvious ink dots in light colored areas of the image
are what make the Encad inappropriate for fine art reproduction.
The
samples here are posters for a recent museum exhibit on 6th-12th
century Maya and Tiquisate figurines which were hollow and thus
used as flutes, ocarinas, and ceramic whistles (yes, they make
lots of noise!).
Why
send your precious photos outside to some unknown copy shop? You
can do the work more economically and definitely more quickly
(and probably at a higher quality) if you do them in-house.
Its easy, just get a wide format printer, hook it up to a RIP,
and print exhibit-quality art for your museum.
Now
that we have the HP
DesignJet 2800 we don't use the Encad as much. And now that
the newer HP
5000ps is available, it's another leap in quality for photo-realistic
images. We have been doing test prints on the HP 5000ps and did
more extensive tests during summer 2001. Our ColorSpan
DisplayMaker XII was installed by late June.
Check
out FLAAR Report Series on Photo-Realistic
Museum Quality
If
you would like to get access to Dr Nicholas Hellmuth's considerable
experience with museum photography and how to prepare a digital
fine art exhibit for your museum, it's as easy as checking out
www.digital-photography.org
or www.cameras-scanners-flaar.org
Last
checked Jan. 15, 2003,
Previously
updated June 9, 2001 
