How to Define Digital Art as Original or Print

To print artwork for exhibition purposes or selling online, you need to exist able to achieve a quality of output that has a name: "giclée". The term is based on the French word gicleur, the French technical term for a jet or a nozzle. In short, a giclée print requires an inkjet printer.

This article will discuss suitable printers, but as giclée printers are quite expensive to buy, run, and maintain, it will also cover what you tin can achieve on a depression budget and share some tips for outsourcing. Still, you must always get with the highest quality you can afford if only because your art is supposed to brand you coin and non to ruin your reputation.

Today, giclée is associated with inkjet equipment that uses dye or pigment-based archival inks and archival media, aka substrates. The major vendors that accept this equipment in their production portfolio are Canon, Epson and HP. Merely printers that can output to A2 media (at to the lowest degree 24 x xx inches) or bigger volition deliver the required quality.

An function printer won't do, mainly because you cannot properly linearize and color manage it. A photograph printer that prints A3 format (or xvi x 12-inch paper) volition — if y'all are willing to compromise on paper size and to some extent on quality besides.

In a nutshell, you require:

the highest output quality you lot can beget — for instance, when the specs mention an ink droplet size of three.v picoliter, that'southward small enough to ensure a very high resolution.
the highest print resolution bachelor with the highest number of inks — a 2400 x 1200 dpi resolution, for instance, and the use of six to ten inks.
inks that guarantee a loftier lightfastness (the degree at which color ink is unaffected by light over fourth dimension) and archival quality (permanence).
a device that can print on a large range of materials, including cotton wool rag, high-gloss photo newspaper, satin paper, matte paper, sheet, moving picture, vinyl, textile, etc.

The divergence between printing at home and printing professionally

All of the devices in the highest market niche are by definition PostScript-printers and all-time controlled through a Raster Epitome Processor (RIP), which is an app that lets you command the manner ink is fired from each private printhead onto the media. That is important because:

It saves money as y'all tin can control the corporeality of ink sprayed onto the medium
It increases quality across what is possible using the printer commuter
Information technology allows for very accurate color rendition
With some printers, it enables increasing the length of the printable surface, saving coin again.

All of these printers must be calibrated (aka linearization) before creating the color profiles for the media y'all're going to utilize. This is the nearly important step in the process because it puts the printer in a known and stable state for each specific ink/media combination.

These preparations are inherent to professional printing, no matter the type of printer used by you or the professional yous're outsourcing an output task to.

If you're starting out or are on a depression budget, you'll probably desire to use a photo printer to impress your art, information technology notwithstanding is a good idea to utilise a RIP. Only if you're working from a near-zero upkeep may you desire to go with the printer manufacturer's printer driver. You'll have to give in on quality and especially on control, though. That'south fine equally long as y'all are aware of information technology and won't use the resulting prints for whatsoever important exhibition. It might then be better to take your art printed past a print-on-need service or even a local printer.

Printing yourself

To print artwork, you will ideally be working in the CMYK color space because you cannot rely on the manufacturer's printer drivers and color profiles to attain accurate color rendition and full command over the ink on the substrate. This means you volition need to invest a bit of money in a adept, genuine Raster Prototype Processor. Pseudo-RIPs exist too, simply these rely on the printer commuter and aren't useful. A relatively inexpensive but decent, convenient RIP is EFI'due south Peppery RIP, which a big number of vendors utilize in their high-book production machines. Other RIPs are ordinarily much more hard to use than EFI's Fiery.

The printer you'll want to purchase for exhibition prints is a big format inkjet printer.

The printer/RIP philharmonic will set you dorsum betwixt 1300 and xi,000 US dollars, depending on the size of the output, the resolution and the machine'due south capabilities — for, example, some printers incorporate a newspaper cutter.

Running your own printer implies that you will take to maintain the printer yourself. Setting up a printer in CMYK mode involves linearizing the printer and creating print/color profiles for every unlike substrate yous determine to impress on. You volition need to repeat that process with each new ink and media batch you buy.

You tin can ofttimes purchase or download generic colour profiles for the printer/media combination you use, but every bit every production batch of ink and paper or canvass differs slightly, you will ever get somewhat off-colour results using those.

When you lot're starting, are on a tight budget or nonetheless testing the waters, you should go on this in the back of your mind.

For true exhibition quality, you lot will as well need to invest in a spectrophotometer. Currently, the but professional one that is affordable is the Ten-Rite i1Pro.

If you're starting out or on a budget, y'all can practice with a Datacolor kit. That won't evangelize the same accuracy as X-Rite's gear but will be less expensive. If you have money to spare, invest in X-Rite'southward i1iO, a robotic, automatic nautical chart reading system designed for photographers, designers and printers who desire to eliminate manual strip reading. The i1iO does the task in minutes whereas manual strip reading tin can be very frustrating and take forever.

If you lot desire to besides impress your artwork on mugs, apparel and other 3-dimensional products, you can buy a heat press (accept a wait at this Amazon page, for example) but they are unwieldy and tedious to use. For that blazon of press, it's probably better to outsource your work.

Outsourcing the press process

Every bit a starting artist or when y'all're on a tight budget, you might consider outsourcing your printing needs to a print-on-demand (POD) service provider. You don't have to invest in equipment, you don't accept to larn to manage a professional printer and you lot withal can get proficient quality for simply a slightly higher cost per print than when you do information technology all by yourself. For showcasing your piece of work at important art exhibitions, yet, I would advise confronting POD services equally it then becomes really of import to control the unabridged process.

When hiring a POD service, such as Printify and Kyte.li, you supply the files in a print-ready format to the printer's specifications and they impress out your artwork. You can then sell your printed materials online, using a range of e-commerce service providers.

The initial workflow with a POD service is very shut to working with a professional printer, which is some other alternative if you discover one who is knowledgeable and helpful. Yet, seeking help from a local printer is leap to be more expensive, but, depending on the printer's willingness, will permit y'all to instruct the printing printing operator during proofing/printing.

Some online fine art sales services take in-firm press facilities or outsource the printing part themselves. For example, Society6 fulfills, prints, and ships your orders internationally. Not merely exercise they print on sheets of paper, textile and canvas, they likewise impress on 3D objects such equally mugs and iPhone cases.

Basic introduction of different printing types

Which types of printers to print artwork are there, anyhow?

The big-format inkjet. It uses print heads that contain tiny nozzles. The nozzles, when excited, squirt a microscopically minor drop of ink on the substrate. Printers that can handle 24-inch wide substrates are called big-format printers.

Minor photograph and office inkjet printers are inkjet printers, but they have as well few nozzles, no advanced droplet applied science and, in general, are not suitable to be controlled by a RIP. They are not very good at printing artwork, except for lower quality prints.

Large photo printers differ from small photo printers in size and quality. As size increases, and then does the cost of the equipment and information technology becomes assisting for manufacturers to include more features.

Most UV-curable inkjets once again are inkjets, only these are massive industrial printing presses that fix the ink to the medium by "curing" with UV light. They're excellent for signage, banners and large panels.

A dye-sublimation printer uses solid ink that must be heated earlier it tin be deposited onto a medium. The ink, once dried, has a flake of a wax feel to it and is permanent. These printers can be used for press on mugs, dress and metallic.

Color laser printers are extremely difficult to color manage and RIPs aren't bachelor for them. Color toner is neither permanent nor lightfast. Laser printers tin but handle paper.

Heat press machines are not printers per se. They are used to apply heat transfers (colored sheets of a synthetic resin or plastic such equally vinyl) onto garments, mugs, and glasses using temperature and pressure level.

Printer Recommendations

Epson'southward A2 model, the SureColor SC-P800, has a minimum ink droplet size of 3.5 picoliter and Variable Droplet Technology that can produce up to iii different droplet sizes per print line at a very loftier resolution.

The HP DesignJet Z9 has a 2400 10 1200 resolution of optimized dpi and uses nine inks (cyan, magenta, yellowish, matte black, photo black, chromatic red, chromatic green, chromatic blue and grey) with an option to install a gloss enhancer.

For aspiring artists on a tight budget, Canon's A3+ Pixma Pro-100S Mk II offers a adept printer with a high resolution at 4800 ten 1200 dpi, eight colors and ChromaLife100 inks for a toll of effectually 500 dollars. For that price, you'll also get good ink permanence and the possibility to run the printer with a RIP. Fifty-fifty with a RIP, you won't exist able to print on sizes of media that extends across the printer'due south specs as you would with other printers, though, but that's a minor disadvantage.

What to look for in a printing vendor and how to check the quality of a print

Before entrusting a print vendor with your piece of work, you should read some user experiences by googling them and looking up comments on their service. If that is satisfactory, send them a test file, preferably one that will give you an idea nearly the color accuracy and the quality of line (due east.thou. jaggies) they can output.

Look for registration errors — that'due south when you can see edges with misaligned colors. If there are whatsoever, information technology means either the equipment is desperately maintained, old, or the operators don't know their job. For mugs and other 3D objects, check the ink'south resistance to abrasives, detergents, and scratches.

Making sure your art is print-prepare

Output your fine art to 300 dpi or college (300dpi is giclée quality), or per the printer's or POD service's instructions.

Raster images (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) are fabricated up of pixels and cannot be enlarged without introducing pixelation. Vector art can be resized at will.

If y'all salvage your file in vector format, you can export it to a raster file of the exact required size in a format such as TIFF and repeat that for unlike sizes after — TIFF is what well-nigh printers can print.

When printing with a RIP, convert your art to CMYK and check that your conversion settings are correct. You should e'er cheque your very first print — the proof — for color accurateness. If you're using your printer, you'll need to impress a control strip in the margin and cheque information technology with your spectrophotometer. Yous'll as well need to cheque the ink density, over again using your spectrophotometer (or a dedicated density meter).

When working with a POD service or vendor, or with your local print store, you should color match your artwork using the color profile of the printing device they'll be using to output your file, so through your software's colour management features correct for colour shifts.

Mutual factors that foreclose a file from existence impress-prepare include:

File in the wrong format.
Document sized improperly.
Colors set up to the wrong color infinite; due east.chiliad. RGB instead of CMYK.
Errors involving margins.
Resolution non loftier enough.

Where and how to sell art prints

When you've successfully printed your artwork, information technology's probably time to let it be juried or offering it for auction. Yous can practice both online. Below are some examples in each category.

Fine art competitions/events

Art Testify

Artists Network

CGTrader Digital Art Competition

Lumen Prize

World Illustration Awards

Society of Illustrators

Sunny Art Prize

ArtStation (Concept art)

Concept Art Globe competitions page

Animation Festivals

Stalk Challenge

Sites that offer a full service from printing to selling

Bonfire
RedBubble

Society6

Zazzle

Spreadshirt

Blueprint by Hümans

Fine Art America

Sites that offer merchant and/or POD services

Merchify

Heat Press Fun

CG Pro Prints

Displate

Sites that offer shopping services merely

Etsy

Artpal

Virtually Erik Vlietinck

Erik Vlietinck became an independent writer and sub-editor 30 years ago, creating high-quality content in English language and Dutch. He is familiar with industrial printing, video, and audio production on the Mac platform, as well as graphics design, digital publishing, color management, and more than. As a announcer/reviewer, Erik contributes to a number of U.s.a.- and United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland-based publications, while serving Fortune 500 companies and SMEs worldwide as a technical copywriter. He is a keen apprentice of pencil drawing and painting with acrylic media and has had some of his artwork exhibited in his native city Antwerp.

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Source: https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/157630