The first, and often most critical step in reproducing a work of art is a well crafted digital capture. It’s not merely a push button process. The best results come from individually adjusted lighting, a color managed workflow, and custom color correction done by an experienced professional (to compensate for the variances in how different pigments reproduce).
A great capture has more than just high resolution that captures fine detail, gesture and impasto. It should also not have extraneous things like specular reflections or imperfections that may be a part of the character of the original, but look distracting when reproduced.
There is a great deal of subjectivity involved in accurately capturing an original work of art, and the expertise of a skilled artist/technician can mean the difference between pedestrian and spectacular results.
I charge $100 for our high-resolution 200 megapixel digital captures of original artwork. Discounts for multiple similar originals are offered on a case by case basis.
This includes: ◆ Individualized lighting to ensure texture and detail are accurately recorded ◆ Extensive manual color correction ◆ File preparation ◆ Digital download link to your files, or copying to flash drive (yours for free, or ours for $8)
Your files are saved in high-resolution TIFF format, as well as lower resolution JPEG. Your artwork is captured with a 200 megapixel digital camera system, so full resolution files are LARGE!
Digital captures also include a 9" x 12" proof on your selected media.
Photographing original two and three dimensional artwork is part analytical, and part subjective. Perfect focus, color fidelity and tonal accuracy are obviously critical, but so is the choice of how to enhance or minimize texture and reflection.
There is no formula for all types of art, because every work has its own special needs. Paintings with impasto need enough shadow and highlight to show the character of the technique, without going overboard to the point that giclees of the image call attention to the fact that they lack impasto.
Works on textured paper often look best when the texture is minimized, so the original paper texture does not fight the paper texture of the print. Inflexible lighting setups from scanners treat every work the same. With our art captures, your work is treated as a unique piece, and the lighting is careful chosen to subtly enhance the detail without overpowering it.
Simply stated, your artwork is captured with state of the art hardware, including one of the highest resolution, and most sophisticated digital cameras on the planet, as well as individually adjusted full spectrum lighting.
Your work is faithfully captured with a Hasselblad H4D-200MS, a 200 megapixel camera system that utilizes the latest multishot technology to combine 6 images for the highest resolution and most accurate color available. It exposes the entire sensor for four separate color plates that are combined for the finest color accuracy, and those are fine tuned with two additional contrast images that are each taken with quarter pixel shifts of the image sensor. The result is unlike any other process, which is why this approach is the method of choice for top museums worldwide.
35 millimeter cameras often produce very nice results, but after witnessing the difference top of the line medium format photography provides, it is easy to appreciate the fact that sometimes bigger is better.
