There were several recent posts about how to print digital pictures; they gave me the idea to try to print some of my pictures. I will use my inkjet printer. But I only guess what is the duration of such prints : will they be slowly distroyed by sun, by air humidity, or something else ...? Do you know if there are some ink fix sprays or liquids to increase duration of printings ? Your experience could help me a lot, cause I found no evidence of such products on the web ;=) Yves

Get it laminated is how I do it. It's perfect then, keep it out of the sun.

laminated = you add a plate of glass or plastic on the print(dictionnary) ?

Hi Yl, laminating a print means to set a cover-layer on top of the print.For sealing the surface the "sandwich" is fixeated in a glue-press and heated to aprox. 80 degree (celsius) with a certain pressure on it.In the same way it can be fixed on a heavier underground (wood or strong paper,even plastic)with a melt-glue layer between the print and the underground.That`s a laminated print. But what i wanted to say is,that it is much ceaper to make real photoprints of your images:just go to the photo- shop (;-))and ask what formats are accepted (tiff,psd,etc). With a resolution of 300 dpi ,you are on the right site. Prizes here in Germany are about 5,99 euro for a 30 by 45 cm print (kodak).Just burn your datas on cd,take it to the shop and see what is happening! Ps:a inkjet print is about 10 euros and not that durable!! cheers rollmops.

Ya see I use laser jet and it works perfect with laminating. For me it's cheaper but photo printing. never thought of that, that also sounds good. See my laser jet can print almost better than they can at the photo place. Printing it myself I can get it exactly the way I want it but you have to have a really good printer. Ink jet is not near as good as laser jet and the ink is not as durable cause it's usually water based. You probibly best to get it printed at the photo place if your printer is so so.

Attached Link: http://www.inkjetart.com/lyson_spray.html

Well printing mages - always a wide field. Lasejets are good but expensive - and limited in size. You can pay for a lot of professional prints before reaching the prize of a good laser printer - especially when you want more than A4 (US letter). And the other problem with "home printing" is, that you need to have a printer which gives you what you want - not the other way round. Personally i don't like laminated prints - too thick and dominant for me. It always gives me the feeling of the menu from a cheap fast food restaurant. As rollmops said, one possibility is to go to a photo shop and let them do it. The problem there is, that you have to accept what they give you. Another possiblity, the one i prefer, is to go to a professional digital printer and let him do it. They are more flexible, you can go there and check the result. A A1 (594x840 mm) print costs at my printer here in Germany around 25 Euro. I think thats not bad. But technically, you need 300dpi Tif/CMYK mode. :-)) Walther

Thanks for the infos !!! I didn't know about all these possibilities ...Will try them soon : photograph or laminated, who knows ... Maybe you have seen there is an article on renderosity about printing (he he he). Next article will deal about resizing in order to print ;=) Yves

Your description of laminating process is very precise and impressive, Rollmops. I'm not surprised you are a professional in this domain. It's not at all my job, that's why I asked these questions which maybe are obvious for some of you. Also I never printed something in very high quality : for the moment my work is purely virtual ;=) I suppose I will try first a photograph, then I could compare the quality of my inkjet prints on a high quality paper. Thanks again to all for these infos, I learned a lot this time again ;=) Yves

Ok Yl,i did not want to be too "impressive"(thats why i deleted that remark,it sounded stupid in this context afterwards ;-)).Asking means learning.And ill do my best to answer if i can (hope you can help me by things i don`t know :-). Best regards rollmops .

To get the highest quality printing possible is to try to print 1 to 1 that's the best you can get. So ever pixel on the screen you get one dot on the paper or drop of ink for that matter. So brings up the math. If you want to print at 600 dpi ( dot per inch ) you need 600 dots per inch on your monitor to get it 1 to 1. Well monitors only display 72 dots per inch usually so you need really huge files to print well. Now this has been brought up before that Vue has this curious setting DPI well on really close inspection it does NOTHING ! It simply instructs your computer printer to fake all the missing data like take a sting of 72 dots in a row and convert it to 300 dots on the fly. You can't get something for nothing so if you want really high quality you have to render to the size your going to print it at so it's 1 to 1. Or as close to it as you can. So at 300 DPI you need to render a picture 3000 wide just to get it to print 10 inches ! Now If I want to do a really nice job I print them at 1200 DPI the files are huge hundreds of megs for a single file. It BLOWS a photo away ! I don't render at 1200 DPI I fake it. I render it at say 600 DPI then I drag it into Photoshop and resize it so it will print at 1200 DPI then I usually do a bit of smoothing so that the data is actually there. I've printed little pictures 2400 dpi they are like you never seen before perfect tiny little pictures. Like perfect but it takes a lot of power and even printing them takes even for small ones a lot of time. I usually don't keep the big files I just print then delete. There too big to keep some will not even fit on a cd. I just keep the source files. There is tons of threads here on this topic on this forum all ready. You should look around and do some reading about it. Do a search.

The other reason I laminate is cause the ink for my computer is $150 dollars for a set. It's way more expensive than photos so I spend a few extra dollars protecting them. If you frame them you can't see the lamination. Like you have total contol of the output and unless you own your own dark room you can't come close to the quality. Now I've got pictures done professionally also and you get what you pay for. Some people know what there doing and give you top notch work but it costs. Have you ever seen pictures printed with a laser? All pictures from the photo shop should look that way cause the data is on the negatives. They don't cause there ripping you off. As one of my professional photographer friends says you print on kleenex paper you get a picture that looks like it's printed on kleenex.

Rollmops : I'm sorry you deleted your remark. My own answer was not precise, it's due to my english; I was very glad to have such details on laminated process, since I'm in fact in engineering stuff and like all technical details ;=))))). > MP : you mentioned so many details on dpi , I have to study carefully your remark . I think the most simple way for me is to discuss with the photograph, he will give me some recomendations. I will try one time, see the result,... trial and error process as usual. Thanks to all again, especially for you rollmops ;=) Yves. there are so many technical infos that are new for me, I will save this thread in my PC

Ok,no problem :-))

I have just started a series on printing in my front page column and I will be spending time discussing archival inks, etc., but that won't be for about a month. In the meantime, you can protect your prints by spraying on a UV protectant spray. Krylon makes a good one that costs a few dollars only. Any art or craft store carries it. It is called UV-resistant Clear 1305. The type of printer you have and the paper you use also makes a difference. I use only Epson inkjet printers. Lasers, Thermal Wax, Dye Subs, etc will give you longer life prints. The Epson 1280 prints on heavy weight matte will last a while. I can't remember their life span. The matte prints from the 2000 will last 100 yrs. The ones from the 2200 a little less ut that printer is the newest and hard to get. I still don't have one. Also, like with any art print, keep it out of dirct sunlight and under glass or plexiglass. The glossier the paper, the more apt to fade.

Thanks Paula for these additional infos. Can't wait to see your next article on printing ;=) Yves