In all my years of printing and teaching printing workshops, the single most important thing…
I am often asked all sorts of questions about fine-art printing, and specifically about recommending papers, suppliers, and other good sources of information.
I provide students in my printing workshops with a whole list of my favorites, but I thought I would post it here for everyone else. I’ve left printers off this list because that needs a complete post unto itself – I’m working on it!
Here are my favorites…
Suppliers:
Shades of Paper – papers, printers, inks, accessories
InkJetMall – papers, inks, and accessories
Frame Destination – frames, mates, and framing supplies in “photographer” sizes
SpeedPress – the best straight-edges in the business, self-healing mats
Booksmart Studio – metal sheets for printing, custom ICC profiles
ColorPlak – ColorBox mounting
ArtiPlaq – frameless mounting
Small Business Loans Illinois – Find information on small business loans in the state of Illinois, as well as all the other states.
Papers: (I have used all of these papers in my gallery and art shows)
Canson – excellent line of fine-art papers with profiles for most popular printers. I especially like Edition Etching Rag and Rag Photographique for color images
Hahnemuhle PhotoRag – another all-time favorite which I keep in stock at all times – gives images a beautiful watercolor look.
Ilford – Ilford Galerie Gold Fiber Silk is my favorite fiber based paper – great traditional look and feel for black and white, and also exceptional detail for color photographs
RedRiver Paper – great economical paper for proofing – also for notecards
Hardware, Software
Spyder 3 Express – monitor calibration device
Color Munki – monitor and printer calibration device
PixelGenius – Photokit Sharpener plugin – my favorite sharpening plugin for Photoshop.
Imagenomic – Noiseware Professional – one of the best noise reduction plugins for Photoshop.
Other World Computing – Excellent external hard drives, memory upgrades, amd other peripherals for Mac and PC.
Robert,
These are great resources for everyone concerned. You might want to check out a place called atlex.com which sells inks, paper, printers, etc. They have had the best pricing on inks for my smaller Epson R1800 .
Another source for frames would be americanframes.com. Great selection and great pricing.
I know how partial we all become to our favorite software but I am suggesting my favorite being Noise Ninja which sets pretty high standards for noise reduction.
Again thanks for leading us all down the path to better suppliers with even better pricing, which is tough in today’s market.
Dick Berry
Dick: Yes I have visited atlex.com as well, and they are also very competitive. My recommendations for retailers was based not only on pricing, but other important considerations such as selection, customer service, and support. I’m really big on relationships, and I can’t tell you how many times being treated like a real “person” rather than just an account number has saved my rear end.
I have used Noise Ninja, and it gives excellent results as well. I find the interface in Noiseware more to my liking. Thanks for the suggestions!