From: £29.99
This is an abstract picture made with the technique of water drops macro photography. The art of creating a beautiful abstract picture by colliding two water drops. The colors, the liquid viscosity, the timing and the size of the drop are just a few of the several challenges a photographer has to face to produce this kind of picture. Like those psychological tests, everybody sees something different, I see:
When I look at this image, at first I notice the background, the colors, and shades of the liquid, but at a certain point, I feel like something is starring at me, and is then that I notice an eye in the middle of the frame, within the black crown of the, rebounded drop, and it’s kind of interesting. Is anything hidden inside which wants to come out?
1 – C Type FUJI CRYSTAL ARCHIVE
Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper is a silver halide colour paper, designed exclusively to produce high-image-quality colour prints. This paper incorporates the latest silver halide emulsion technology, coupler technology and layer design technology to deliver enhanced colour reproduction, white purity, image stability and handling of the photo.
2 – C Type FUJI PEARL
The Fuji Crystal Archive Pearl paper has a rich metallic base. The colours have a reflective, metallic and 3-dimensional feel which creates a distinctive pearl-like appearance. High mid-tones & highlights add luminosity & iridescence which lends this paper to artworks that want to accentuate warmth and depth of colour.
3 – C Type FUJI FLEX
Fujiflex Crystal Archive Printing Material is a silver halide colour printing material with enhanced digital exposure suitability, designed exclusively for digital output on large-format laser printers. This printing material yields high-image-quality digital prints when used with a laser printer. Furthermore, because of its PET (Polyester) base, this printing material produces prints that are superbly smooth with a sharp, transparent super-gloss finish.
4 – GICLEE PRINTS
The term ‘Giclée’ is a French word meaning a spray or a squirt of liquid’. ‘Giclée print’ describes a printing process for fine art pictures created from high-resolution digital images, are printed using archival quality inks onto archival fine art surfaces including canvas and fine art papers with exceptional stability and lightfastness. Giclée printing is the ideal method for printing archival fine art. Giclée prints can be printed on a variety of surfaces including:
Hahnemuhle Pearl
C-type prints are ideal for personal and exhibition printing; they are the perfect ‘all-rounder’ paper type, giving good colour rendition as well as clear black and white prints. All of our c-type prints are produced on laser printers, giving optimum results and colour accuracy for your images, as well as lightfastness and archival quality. Please note that c-type printing is a colour process, and all B&W images will contain a partial colour cast due to the paper emulsion. For no colour cast, we recommend selecting a B&W Silver Gelatin paper.
A digital c-type is a photographic print, on light-sensitive paper, that has been exposed using digital technology, rather than traditional analogue (otherwise known as ‘darkroom’) techniques. Digital c-types are created by exposing the paper using lasers or LEDs rather than a bulb, like in a darkroom. The second part of the traditional process is much the same, however: the paper is processed by a photographic developer, followed by bleach fix before being washed to remove the processing chemicals.
A digital C-type also has shows more shadow and highlight detail to those of an inkjet/Giclee print which is made up of dots. For example, an inkjet printer can only either lay down a drop of ink or not and as a result area in the highlight tones use the white base of the paper, so it can’t produce the tonal range in the highlighted area that a C-type print can. Also, because the colour dyes of a C-type print are contained within the emulsion, the viewer can’t see any ink sitting on the surface of the print. In addition, this also means that the C-type prints are more durable, inkjet prints being susceptible to fingerprint marks on the print surface or the ink being scratched.
In terms of longevity C-type prints have been around longer so have a proven archival quality, which can be further prolonged by being laminated with a scratch-proof and UV protective laminate. Although as yet unproven, inkjet prints are thought to have a similar lifespan if pigment inks are used but many cheaper inkjet printers use dye inks, which can fade quite quickly.
Inkjet prints also suffer more from metameric failure, which means that when viewed under different light sources the print changes colour. We can testify to this as on a frequent basis we get inkjet prints supplied as a colour guide for us to match a C-type print to. If we compare the 2 under prints under one light source and then move to another light source the inkjet changes colour noticeably whereas the C-type is much less so. Another important factor is cost. Photographic C-type prints are much cheaper to produce than Giclee prints, especially so when using high-quality inks and paper.
C-type prints and Giclée prints are two very different printing processes, one is a photographic print the other is an inkjet. A digital c-type is a traditional photographic print produced from a digital file, rather than a negative. Many people think that a ‘digital print’ has to be a Giclée print, but this is not so. A Giclée print is quite different, using no chemistry or light sensitivity, only archival ink.
Giclée printers have a higher printing quality due to a higher dot per square inch resolution than inkjet printers, allowing you to produce high-quality fine art prints. Giclée printers use higher quality inks, this allows the production of exceptional prints, when applied to high-quality paper/surfaces like the Canson Baryta, with an unbeatable archival lifespan of up to 200 years.
Giclée and C-type printing have their own strengths, as the paper, you choose to print on, so the choice depends on the kind of picture you want to print and the effect you want to archive.
Giclées inkjet prints produce a wider range of colours (Gamut) especially and the end of the spectrum. The reason is that Giclée inkjet prints apply pure pigment inks directly to the paper. This particular advantage allows performing better when printing photos where you have vibrant and punchy colours. Giclées inkjet printers have a wider range of paper, each one of them for a particular effect you want to achieve.
On the other hand, C-type printers are a better choice when you have a photo with a gradual change of tones, like human skin. C-types printers can reproduce a much more refined tonal range (up to 16 million colours per square inch, compared to Giclée’s 256 colours per square inch). This means that C-type prints are far superior to Giclée prints at handling colour changes. This particular skill stands out in darker tones, where the difference is more obvious and C-type printers emerge victoriously.
In fact, Giclée prints can actually increase the value of an original. Also because of the high quality, these prints can often increase in value over time. This is of course dependent on the artist. But it’s especially true if the artist gains more recognition and if they are a limited edition print.