A word of Warning

It is relatively straightforward to produce a canvas print that looks pretty much like an original work of art.  But to get a giclée print that is virtually indistinguishable from the original is much more difficult, and may actually be impossible.

What we do for a 'simple' reproduction

The chances are that your art can quite easily be reproduced photographically.  Take a snapshot of your work yourself and examine the photo.  If you are happy with the colour, then we can help you produce a very nice copy.

What we do is to either scan or photograph your work (and how we choose our method depends on the size and material of your original).  If the work is quite large, we may capture the image in sections and merge them together.  And then we will have a master image which we can process as though it is a photograph.

If we need to merge images, we charge $30.00 per image that we capture; so an image that we agree needs four shots would cost $120.00 to create the master image.  If a single shot is all we need, we charge $20.00.

Once we have our master image, we proceed as though we are dealing with a normal photograph.

What we do for a 'difficult' reproduction

Basically, the process is the same as for a simple reproduction, but with the intimate involvement of you, the artist, and with much more trial and error.

We start by creating a master image as above, which we will ask you to approve for focus, detail, definition and so on.  You will have to visit our premises to do this.  It may be that we have to repeat the process a few times - you decide when the image is up to standard.  Finally, we will make a full-sized proof.  Comparing the original piece with our reproduction we will together identify all the areas where the colour is not perfect, and make decisions about how to adjust the image.  And then we will repeat the process until you are happy with the result.

As you can imagine, the whole business can take a long time and use a lot of materials.  We charge $75.00 per hour, but with no charge for proofs etc.  As an alternative, for the sake of certainty of budgetting, we are also prepared to quote a fixed fee, which we will assess on the basis of the perceived level of difficulty and the size of the piece.  As a rule of thumb, you could expect to pay $250 per square foot of original.

What makes it difficult?

• Texture

  If you have surface texture in your original (such as thickness of paint) there is no magic way of lighting the original so as to preserve the illusion of texture in the reproduction.  Each piece has to be treated differently, and there is a lot of subjective opinion involved in selecting the best image.

• Colour

  Digital cameras and scanners can not capture all the colours it is possible to create using paint.  They are limited to a discrete number of colours - in the millions it is true, but still a finite number.  And the printer (every printer) has a more limited range in turn.  Every colour in the printed image is created by showering the canvas with tiny dots of ink in only six colours - cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, and black.  There is no red ink, no white ink, no green ink and so on.  Some colours are therefore impossible to reproduce.

  The trick is to disguise the discrepancies as much as possible.  That's where we have to work alongside the original artist to choose the best methods.

  The human eye (or rather, the human brain) is really very good at seeing what it wants to see, as far as colour is concerned.  A picture may look perfect on your computer screen (or TV for that matter).  But it is not.  What we perceive as 'black' is in fact the colour of the screen itself - probably a sort of grey, if you look at it with the power turned off.  What we perceive as 'white' is likewise not really white.  It doesn't matter for most purposes.  But hold a really black object beside the screen and notice the difference.

  A reproduction of a work of art is subject to the same rules.  It may look perfect when viewed in isolation, but quite different when seen side by side with the original work.  It is only the artist who can decide whether that is acceptable, and how much effort should be expended in seeking perfection.

• One final word

  The problems outlined above are universal.  All mechanical methods of reproduction are subject to exactly the same set of constraints.  You should expect a better result from a giclée print than a lithograph, but the only way to get a perfect reproduction in all respects is to produce a copy using the identical materials and methods as in the original.