Printing
To get the best from these images they need to be printed large. Some of the panoramas have suggested print sizes shown on their page. Six foot prints are quite possible and look great in the right circumstances. Much over six feet mounting can become a problem as standard plywood sheet sizes are not big enough. Frames and glass also get to be problematic as the glass becomes very heavy. Thin transparent acrylic is the most practical glazing or the print can be left exposed.
All images are printed on a Hewlett Packard DesignJet 130 printer on “Premium Plus Photo Satin” paper using HP inks. This printer has very good performance and has a built in closed loop colour monitoring system. This allows very consistent print quality. I use a monitor calibrated with an Xrite i1 calibration system using the efi ES-1000s spectrophotometer. The image is calibrated between monitor and print and produces a very close correspondence between my viewed image and the final print. Both monitor and printer are calibrated to give more accurate and wider range of colours. Some results from the calibration of my system are shown here. The DesignJet prints have good permanence. Independent tests by Wilhelm research give 82 years for prints framed under glass, 100 years for prints framed with a UV filter and greater than 200 years for dark stored prints. This is much better than for most wet process photographic prints.
Please note that the size of the print is approximate. Prints are made on 18" or 24" wide rolls. Some margin must be left at the edges for the printer operation and mounting of the prints with a matte. I sign and date each print on the white border. I do not believe in doing limited editions. This made sense with etchings, lithographs, etc. where the print quality varies with how often the master image is used. This is definitely not the case for digital images.
