| Joined: | Thu Apr 19th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4424 |
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If you got good enough results from sending out to a pro printing company and aren't looking for volume printing, you could save yourself a lot of money buying all the equipment. I've been investigating prices and it's not really that expensive to get the fine art quality prints done at a lab. I saw sample prints at a tradeshow recently and they looked good to me. :)
Here are a few prices from a list I was looking at earlier (2nd price incudes VAT):
14x10" Fine Art Print(6.18) 7.42
10x14" Fine Art Print (6.18) 7.42
14x11" Fine Art print (6.80) 8.16
11x14" Fine Art print (6.80) 8.16
14x14" Fine Art Print (8.61) 10.33
15x10" Fine Art print (6.59) 7.91
10x15" Fine Art print (6.59) 7.91
15x12" Fine Art Print (7.91) 9.49
12x15" Fine Art Print (7.91) 9.49
15x15" Fine Art Print (9.89) 11.87
16x11" Fine Art Print (7.75) 9.30
11x16" Fine Art Print (7.75) 9.30
16x12" Fine Art print (8.45) 10.14
12x16" Fine Art print (8.45) 10.14
16x16" Fine Art Print (11.29) 13.55
I hated printing my own stuff. Could never get the colours right, even with a profile. I've seen good reviews of the Canon Pro printer which has 12 ink tanks incl various black and grey tones (if I remember rightly), and people rave about Hannemuhle fine art paper if you fancy the DIY challenge.
I totally empathise with your abhorance of printing, Judith. I would get halfway through a print to discover a colour blob.....start again.
I used a local lab to do the few prints I needed...let him have the blobs and reprints. I also noticed, as has been mentioned, that if you didn't do it regularly the jets could dry up..with more priming expense.
When my A2 printer died ( probably from lack of use!) I never got another.
For me the only reason to do it 'in house' is retention of the artwork files. Unless you know the person doing the printing and trust them there is always a risk of copyright breach.
____________________
Eric