PAllen
6-Oct-2011, 11:07
We recently completed an interesting job involving photographing large prints and reproducing them on canvas using inkjet printers. We achieved some very nice results and want to share our workflow in case the community is interested in photographing fine art and producing fine art prints or if there are critiques/improvements that we can do to our workflow the next time we have this kind of job.
Phase one: Produce 50 (5 x 7 ft.) prints RAW images. Subjects ranged from landscapes to Australian aboriginal culture to Haitian scenes. We did find that adding a small amount of grain to some of the images helped smooth the toning out when blowing up to this size. We made the prints on Canvas using a Canon ipf9000 and sealed them using ClearShields Type C coating (1 coating of matte and a second coating of satin.)
Phase two: The canvases were sent to indigenous artists in Australia, Haiti and the US to paint onto and add "story" into the images.
Phase three: The multi-media artworks were returned to us for ultra high-resolution (130-Megapixel) digitization, retouching and color correction. As with photographing "most" flat artwork we had our lights set to 45degree angles from the center of the pieces and had polarizing filters over them to reduce glare. We took 6 to 9 captures of each piece and stitched them together using AutoPano Pro.
Phase four: We printed the digitized versions of the artwork on canvas again using the Canon and sealed them again. The amount of detail we were able to capture and reproduce was pretty remarkable.
I cannot post images of the final pieces here but we will be uploading some examples of the details to our projects page next week. http://www.kenallenstudios.com/projectsP16.html
Let us know if you have any questions about the techniques used in this process as we would be glad to share. We have tried the Clearstar coating on Fine Art papers with no success.
Best,
Patrick Allen
Operations Manager
http://www.kenallenstudios.com
Phase one: Produce 50 (5 x 7 ft.) prints RAW images. Subjects ranged from landscapes to Australian aboriginal culture to Haitian scenes. We did find that adding a small amount of grain to some of the images helped smooth the toning out when blowing up to this size. We made the prints on Canvas using a Canon ipf9000 and sealed them using ClearShields Type C coating (1 coating of matte and a second coating of satin.)
Phase two: The canvases were sent to indigenous artists in Australia, Haiti and the US to paint onto and add "story" into the images.
Phase three: The multi-media artworks were returned to us for ultra high-resolution (130-Megapixel) digitization, retouching and color correction. As with photographing "most" flat artwork we had our lights set to 45degree angles from the center of the pieces and had polarizing filters over them to reduce glare. We took 6 to 9 captures of each piece and stitched them together using AutoPano Pro.
Phase four: We printed the digitized versions of the artwork on canvas again using the Canon and sealed them again. The amount of detail we were able to capture and reproduce was pretty remarkable.
I cannot post images of the final pieces here but we will be uploading some examples of the details to our projects page next week. http://www.kenallenstudios.com/projectsP16.html
Let us know if you have any questions about the techniques used in this process as we would be glad to share. We have tried the Clearstar coating on Fine Art papers with no success.
Best,
Patrick Allen
Operations Manager
http://www.kenallenstudios.com