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by Martin 095 on Mon Aug 03, 2015 10:13 am
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Hi,

I have an Epson 4880 printer and want to print an image on canvas.  I have never done this before and was hoping some of you with experience could give me some tips:

1) Is there a supplier that makes a superior canvas?  For the sake of convenience and the lack of knowledge, I am considering Epson's product, but I have no feel for whether there is a difference in quality.

2) Are there any special precautions I should consider when printing to canvas?  My sum total experience with printing has been with semigloss, glossy, and the occasional matte paper.  If I plan to stretch this canvas over a frame, does this affect the dimensions of my image?  I would prefer to minimize the loss of segments of the image in the mounting process if possible.

3)  I presume if I were to use a manufacturer other than Epson, they would supply reasonable profiles for their product.  Is this generally true?  Are they any manufacturers I should avoid for this reason?

4)  And lastly, this on particular image I plan to print straight as a photograph, but I also worked in PS to make it look like a painting.  Once again, I have never done this.  For printing the "painting", are there any considerations wrt workflow that I should consider?  Changes to how I sharpen, make the colors brighter, etc?

TIA,
Martin
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus
 

by tedculotta on Mon Aug 03, 2015 2:34 pm
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Hi Martin,

I have not printed on canvas. However, I recommend visiting breathingcolor.com and also checking out their blog. They seem to specialize in DIY canvas. Good luck.

Cheers,
Ted Culotta
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by dbolt on Wed Aug 05, 2015 7:34 pm
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I second the suggesting about breathingcolor.com. Their canvas is quite nice and they have several helpful videos on their website with suggestions for printing on canvas. One of their helpful suggestions was to tape a strip of regular photo paper onto the back of the canvas and then make sure the leading edge of the paper (with the paper extending about 1" beyond the edge of the canvas) is at 90 degrees from the side of the canvas. The paper makes it easier for the printer's pickup mechanism to start feeding the canvas. Cutting the paper at 90 degrees insures the paper feeds straight into the printer. My experience is with an Epson 3880 and BC Lyve canvas.
Douglas Bolt
Maryland, USA
http://dougboltphotography.com
 

by Royce Howland on Thu Aug 06, 2015 8:30 am
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#1: I also can recommend Breathing Color Lyve canvas; it's what we use predominantly at our print shop. It has a good surface, good white point, and minimal flaking compared to other canvases.

#2a: Be aware that canvas is not dimensionally stable, as a material, compared to paper. It may skew a bit during printing, and almost certainly will not feed "true" in the linear direction of media feed. In other words, if you print a 50" image on a piece of canvas it won't come out 50" long. We have to put a compensation factor into our printing RIP when using canvas, to adjust for the length differential. Depending on what software you're using to print, there may not be the ability to do this in the printing app, so you may have to experiment with how canvas prints on your setup and then adjust your file size manually to account for the differential.

#2b: Yes, if you stretch the canvas, this will impact the print dimensions of the image on the canvas. Stretching is not a precision matter the way that you can razor cut your materials for prints on paper when framing & matting. (And even in that case, most professional framers leave about 1/8" slush in the matting and backboard size because frame cut & join may not be super precise either.) At our shop, we normally expand images for canvas prints by 1/4" to 3/8" on all sides to allow the print surface to "full bleed" around the wrap edges when doing a so-called museum wrap -- where the full image is visible on the face of the print, and the sides are taped off (typically with black tape). For a gallery wrap, you need to increase the prints size by 2 times the thickness of the stretcher bars plus the same 1/4" to 3/8" slush to allow the print surface to wrap around the back side of the bars. You'll need to do some research on stretching technique if you plan to do this yourself.

#2c: If you're going to stretch canvas and sell or display it that way, consider that you're exposing the print surface to the ambient environment in a way that isn't the case when framing under glass. At our shop, we laminate every stretched canvas that we produce with a laminate layer that's affixed in a heated vacuum press. This protects the canvas surface from airborne contaminants, somewhat slows down UV damage, and also protects the canvas surface from sratches, scuffing and cracking especially at the corners of the wraps. If you don't laminate or use a sealant of any kind, you can expect shorter life and more damage to the canvases.

#3: All canvas manufacturers should have profiles for the Epson 4880. I don't have a great opinion of most canned profiles; a few are pretty good but most can be improved with custom profiling. If maximizing accurate and full colour & contrast is important to you on any media, custom profiling is very often worth the investment. Having said that, the BC Lyve canned profile and most others should be good enough for you to initially evaluate the media for how you like it. You may need to try more than one to pick the one that's best for your budget, taste and purposes.

#4: No. An image is an image is an image. Whether it's supposed to be a straight photo, a painting, or whatever, the printing workflow is the same. How you prep the image depends on how you want it to look in print... that has nothing to do with the genre of the imagery itself. If you want it sharper, sharpen it more. If you want it softer, don't sharpen or even blur it. If you want it more colourful, boost the local contrast and/or saturation. If you want it more watercolor-ish, then reduce the contrast and saturation. Etc. The primary implication for printing on canvas is that the canvas fabric weave itself is a factor in how fine detail will render on the print. The canvas is actually physically textured; if you have fine image detail that's approximately at the same frequency as the canvas weave structure (or smaller), this will impact how that detail looks on canvas.
Royce Howland


Last edited by Royce Howland on Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 

by Mark Picard on Thu Aug 06, 2015 5:46 pm
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Royce nailed it down pretty good, and I would just like to add a couple of things. First, when you print on canvas make sure you change your platen gap setting to "widest" or "canvas" to avoid canvas and head collisions. For the stretched borders of the wrap around, I use Perfect Re-size software plugin. This software does all the work of calculating and performing the borders automatically for you with just a couple of clicks of the mouse. It offers several choices for the borders including a mirror image border which allows you to not crop anything off the image. You can do all four borders in PS, but Perfect Resize Pro does it much quicker. I initially got Perfect Re-size Pro (originally Genuine Fractals) for it's uprezzing capabilities, and I found out it did the wrap borders too. 
Mark Picard
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by Martin 095 on Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:03 am
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Thanks for all the helpful replies – I have a lot of work to do! Your help is very much appreciated.
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus
 

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