Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
Digital printing workflow: from digital matrix to hardcopy print.
Putting Prints in Their Places
The worlds of photography and traditional fine-art printmaking have been historically
separated by a kind of psychological barrier. Art exhibitions of fine-art prints don’t usually
include photographs. Photo exhibits don’t also have etchings, for example. And as far
as the practitioners themselves go, traditional artists such as painters or printmakers have
not commonly also been photographers, and the reverse has also been true. The techniques
and the language of each field have been different—until now.
Computer technology in general, and digital printing in particular, is the big gorilla straddling
the fence and spilling over onto the once-separate arenas of photography and fineart
printmaking. The whole field of image and art production is rapidly changing, and if
you plan to be an active player in this new world, you have to know something about the
old one. It’s time for a quick review to give you some perspective.
What’s a Print?
Unlike paintings or drawings, most prints exist in repeatable, multiple examples. Images
are not created directly on paper but with another medium or on another surface (a master
or matrix), which then transfers (or in the case of digital, “outputs”) the image to paper.
More than one impression or example can be made by printing the same image on a new
piece of paper. The total number of impressions or prints an artist or photographer makes
of one image is frequently called an edition. Following are the three major types of prints
that apply to the making of art. (Traditional fine-art printmakers maintain that only they
make what can be truly called “prints,” but I take a wider view.)