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Out of context: Reply #37437
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An enormous step forward came three years ago with the introduction of the HP Designjet 130 printer. "The first print that came off the 130 was, for me, a revelation because I saw that all these years I wasn’t getting the full fidelity of the negative," says Meyerowitz.
Meyerowitz’s work process further evolved when, in preparation for a major exhibition at Jeu de paume in Paris, he was introduced to the Hasselblad Flextight X5 scanner. “ We had one of those jolts that suddenly makes you realize that even though you thought you had a really good scanner, it had by comparison so many flaws and workflow difficulties that once we had the Hasselblad Flextight X5 we thought we had landed in photographers’ heaven.” The difference? According to Meyerowitz, “It’s clean. It’s almost dust free. It has incredible software for us to make a file.” The scanned image can be opened on any computer and—using the Hasselblad software—can be manipulated “eloquently.”For the Paris exhibition, Meyerowitz and his team merged the Hasselblad Flextight X5 scanner with the HP Designjet Z3100 printer, which features the latest HP inkjet technology. In the past, if he wanted to put together an exhibition of this importance and scope, he would have to send the original negatives to the lab. “It would take weeks of my time going back and forth to the lab—unproductive time sitting on the subway or driving in the car or waiting in the lab—and all that is finished now,” he says. “We make the scan here. We tweak it in PhotoShop. We make a quick test-print on the Z-series. We make an adjustment. We color-correct under the lights and, boom, it’s done. I don’t have to leave the studio.”
The real test for Meyerowitz’s Designjet/Hasselblad Flextight X5 system came when an exhibition of his Ground Zero prints arrived at its destination, the Museum der Arte Moderne in Salzburg, damaged and unfit for public display. With the opening of the show just days away, there was no time to panic. Meyerowitz and his team spun into action. They calculated file sizes and the time it would take to print them. “We literally left the studio at night with five or six prints in the queue, came back in the morning, and there they were: all rolled up, waiting, cut and sitting in rolls in the basket,” recalls Meyerowitz. Using the Z3100 we printed out the entire exhibition in less than three days and shipped it over to them.
I just feel like it would have been impossible if I had to go to the lab. We could not have done that show.” Currently underway is a 400-image retrospective book of Meyerowitz’s work. Every photo is scanned at his studio. The resulting file is shipped to the publisher with a reference print generated by the Z3100. “As a pre-press tool, this has turned out to be an extraordinary help. It gives them incredible color-corrected images. Even though it’s an RGB image and they’re printing CMYK, we do a conversion to CMYK for them. So I feel as if quality starts here and goes out into the world in a way that it couldn’t before.”
In addition to HP’s 12-ink system of pigmented inks, Meyerowitz appreciates consistency from print to print thanks to the embedded spectrophotometer and the HP calibration technologies built into the HP Color Center software. HP Vivera Pigment Inks, with their 200 years permanence*, also offer some solid benefits on the business side. In the not-too-distant past, there was great resistance to collecting and showing color photographs. Meyerowitz recalls, “Back in the ‘70s when I first started showing them, everyone said, ‘Oh, but they’re going to fade and why should I buy it. I’ll spend $300 on a print and it’s going to be gone in a few years.’ And museums felt the same way.” Now collectors, galleries and museums are all willing to take photos into their collections. Every time he signs a print, he writes on the back, “HP archival pigment print” because more institutions and more collectors are willing to pay $10,000 to $20,000 more for a print that is made with HP materials. “It gives collectors a great sense of security,” says Meyerowitz. He’s a big fan of HP Professional Satin paper. The Designjet Z3100 also prints on other fine-art papers, canvases and a variety of photo papers.- trying to determine if inkjets have overcome past limitations as fine art medium********
- Swiss cheese.Horp
- trying to determine if inkjets have overcome past limitations as fine art medium