Australian INfront

Hey guys,

I'm looking to print a digital painting, the dimensions which are 840 by 840 mm. It would preferably be a limited run of 25 or so, on a heavier, brown sort of stock.

I've gone to Snap Printing, and was told that the heaviest paper they put through their larger printers was 170gsm, white paper, with an individual print costing $90.

Does anyone have any recommended places to print such a job? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

The painting's still a work-in-progress, but at the moment it's looking like this:

Thanks in advance!
Aldous

Assuming you're in Sydney, try:

http://www.look.com.au/
http://www.bannershop.com.au/

Snap's pricing is rather expensive, I would have quoted that at around $50ish for their specs. Careful of a lot of those smaller places. They outsource a lot of that kind of work and just tag on a big markup.

Bannershop is good for cheap prices, but if you're after fine art quality, stay away. The biggest problem you're gonna run into with cheaper printers is getting the right colour (especially that blue) + decent print resolution, also, the stock wont be fine art quality, eg. archival stock etc.

170gsm is the standard paper for a lot of HP machines because the heads are thermal based. We have a designjet, max we put through is 250ish. If you can find someone who uses a new model epson you'll be able to print on thicker stocks with a bigger gamut (900 pro stylus series now prints in CMYKOG).

You're gonna find it hard to get a brown stock for large format inkjet. If you don't like white, try asking for 'natural' colour. I know a lot of fine art papers use that term rather than brown.

I'll see if I can get some names for you of some fine art printers if you like. Just be aware that you'll be paying more than but you'll be comparing 'point of sale' materials to fine art materials.

woops, wrote a bit of an essay there, but thought it best to explain a bit of why you're getting those prices..

Amazing, Stuffee!

Thanks for taking the time to type all that out. When you mention the added expense of using 'fine art printers', is the difference significant?

Oh, one more thing;

When you say 'we', who are you referring to?

I manage the prepress department for a large format printer in Brisbane.

Honestly, I wouldn't know what folks are charging for archival prints down south but at a guess I'd say around $80 to $100 per square metre. Depends what you're getting really.

You're basically paying for better printer and media quality, an experienced operator and a proper colour managed workflow which can be expensive to maintain.

Love the painting btw.

Thanks for all the compliment (and all the help)!

I found a guy that owns one of the new Epson's. He's just got it sitting in his house.

Anyway, the print was done on 310 gsm Hahnemule with archival inks:

Thanks again for everyone's help, particularly Stuffee.

Aldous, can you give me the details of the guy you used? i'm looking to get some work printed.