Urban Art Association

What is good quality printing? (with Tim from Artomatic), by troika49 on Jan 17, 2020 0:01:37 GMT 1, Updated: Replaced URL with Tim's current website.

I'm been emailing Tim Milne who is a yoda when it comes to printing. He is also a scholar and a gentleman. He runs Artomatic and has run prints for many artists who are famous today (but weren't so much in the early 2000s). I asked him the question of "How do you tell a good quality print?" and I thought I would post the answer for posterity and for others to comment and discuss.

Often we care so much about the image but not necessarily the technical details of how it was made or the paper...

Tim's answer below:

"To answer your question about how do you know good quality printing, it’s not that easy.

Nowadays, there are many high quality digital processes that will rival traditional print processes, so the arguments for either now boil down to economics — digital is cheaper for short runs, traditional is (still) cheaper for long runs.

Generally speaking, the closer you have to look at it to see the dots, the better quality it is. In some digital photography processes like C-types you might mot ever see the dots even in a spy glass.

You can split all printing into two distinct groups: full colour (CMYK) image reproduction and special colours (and processes like foil blocking)

The difference is that with CMYK, the image exists in its original form (albeit digitally so only on screen) and the print is a reproduction of that, so therefore, ultimately inferior.

With special colours and processes (e.g. foil blocking), the artwork doesn’t exist in its intended form as an original (it will be vector artwork to be printed in the desired process / colour / finish) that only exists (in its intended form) when it’s actually printed

The distinction of originality is obviously important in the art world, and in the case of C-types printed from hi-res digital files, one could argue that no physical original ever existed, but I still believe the print in this instance, no matter how high quality, is still a subordinate reproduction.

There will be a continued shift towards CMYK, though, as it’s a constant that everyone can work to — speccing CMYK artwork is much easier than speccing special colours and finishes. Digital indigo is now rivalling top quality litho for quality and digital versions of foil blocking are beginning to arrive, but they’re still some way off in terms of ultimate quality. Screen-print has already been relegated to an art-house (albeit thriving one) process since its commercial function can now be entirely fulfilled with large format ink-jet prints. Some niche screen-print remains doing UV varnishes and the odd special ink, but mostly it’s gone the way of Letterpress as a Traditional process, not a commercial one."