Customizing digital printing for fine art practice

The presentation will demonstrate how through alternative methods of digital print production the Centre for Fine PrintResearch (CFPR) is developing methodologies for digital printing that attempt to move beyond standard reproductiveprint methods. Profiling is used for input and output hardware, along with bespoke profiling for fine art printmakingpapers. Examples of artist’s work, and examples from the Perpetual Portfolio are included - an artist in residencescheme for selected artists wanting to work at the Centre and to make a large-format digital print. Colour is an importantissue: colour fidelity, colour density on paper, colour that can be achieved through multiple-pass printing. Research isalso underway to test colour shortfalls in the current inkjet ink range, and to extend colour through the use of traditionalprinting inks.Keywords: profile, artists’ prints, image quality, digital print, curves, screenprint, colour 1. INTRODUCTION The Centre is developing bespoke approaches to digital printing that concentrate on the production of fine art prints andon the artist making it. Whilst the Centre has a close engagement with photography and photomechanical processes, thisarea of investigation is based on artwork that has not been created outside the computer, and could not have beengenerated or exist other than through digital generation. Working outside the field of new developing digitaltechnologies, the impression is of each sector working in isolation without attention as to the effect of one technology onthe other. Are current technologies associated with digital print: image creation; colour-imaging software; colourmanagement; printers; and colour fidelity technology, developed independently by different manufacturers? Thetransition of data from one device to another is being addressed for a narrow sector of commercial volume printing, butnot for the artist/designer, who has very different requirements from, for example, an industrial firm specialising in four-colour offset litho printing or giclee bureaus making reproductions from existing artworks.Current print technology is neither suited nor philosophically designed for artist led methods of making, resulting in theartist making compromises on quality, which can furthermore be time consuming. Research undertaken so far, andresearch into the future, will consider working methods that consult the artist/designer at every step of the process.The Centre’s research seeks to develop a comprehensive overview of the entire framework of digital imaging, fromimage creation to print: that incorporates how an image is captured or generated; how an artist can further developimages through digital imaging programs other than the mainstream photographic editing software, and eventually, howan image is printed and modifications to printer hardware. One main aspect of this research is to identify andincorporate artist-specific imaging procedures, techniques, qualities and standards into what is principally an industry-dominated field.