Digital Prints

Other reasons to coat prints include: (1) isolating certain pigment inks that tend to
smear or smudge on glossy media, (2) providing a base on which to add painted-on
embellishments, and (3) giving your prints even more protection for some situations
like outdoor exposure.
Types of Coatings
Coatings (also called overcoats or topcoats) come in different forms including film laminates,
liquid laminates (clearcoats, acrylic varnishes, photo lacquers), and sprays. These
can be further broken down into finish types from high gloss to satin or matte. Ideally,
you want an inert, odorless, colorless, non-yellowing, anti-fungal coating that’s easy to
apply. You also want to avoid a coating that draws coating or buffering agents out of the
medium, an early problem often reported that caused the coated prints to turn milky or
dusty. And, you want to know that the coating is not going to shorten the life of the print.
Let’s look more closely at two popular coating categories for digital prints.
Liquid Laminates
Liquid laminates are of many types—acrylics, solvent-based, water-based, and UVcurable,
and they can form a protective shield on your prints. However, these post-print
coatings must be carefully matched to the type of inks and especially the media pre-coatings
used so that the image is not destroyed when one attacks the other. Most liquid laminate
suppliers will give guidelines for this kind of materials matching.
Brushing and rolling are two popular ways to put a liquid coating onto a print. (Screening
and using a “Mayer” or metering bar are two more, but they are beyond what most selfprinters
want to tackle.)
Brush: Liquid coatings can be brushed on with relative ease, although it takes patience
and practice in order to get a thin, uniform coat. Brush choice plus correct thinning technique
are essential.
Roll: Rolling on a liquid coating can be a good option for fine-art paper and canvas prints,
although it can be tricky and sometimes messy. Printmakers report mixed results with rollons.
Ken Smith uses a 4-inch super-smooth foam roller to apply Liquitex Matte Varnish
(for matte finishes) and Liquitex Gloss Medium and Varnish (for gloss finishes) to his canvas
prints (see Figure 9.3). “In 99 percent of the cases,” Smith says, “this method works
well. That other 1 percent, however, causes problems when mysterious intruders such as
specs of dust are introduced to ruin the coating.”
And while Australian printmaker Len Phillips also has had good luck with a fine-nap paint
roller, others have switched to professional spraying systems.
Chapter 9 ■ Finishing and Displaying Your Prints 287