The fine art of digital printing

Convergence Culture: modern printing has more in common with the master printers of old than most realise, writes Haydn Shaughnessy.

Digital is a bit of a dirty word in the fine-art world. Digital prints are infinitely replicable and introduce the danger that an unscrupulous artist might create a limited edition of his or her work and then print a few more just for good measure, a complaint I've heard but find difficult to take seriously. Digital printing is accessible to most artists, reducing the need for skilled master printers, and it breaks a centuries-old tradition. Finally, manipulating imagery with digital software can make a lazy artist look good.

For all these reasons, those in the digital side of the art world might look at what's happening right now in fine art and see a flight back to paint. Paint is a medium for original work, paint sells, and prices are going up and up. Paint is safe.

Artists who've decided to become their own printers are few and far between, though the case for self-printing is growing. David Adamson, a master printer who runs Adamson Editions in Washington DC, told me recently that his digital studio is still in big demand from top-flight photographers and artists, primarily because Adamson's knowledge-base is not one they have the time or inclination to master.

"There was definitely a shift away from centralised print studios," says Adamson. "Lots of artists bought machines and printed, but equally a lot gave up after a while because the machines need throughput." Left idle, inkjet print heads fur up with ink and few artists either print enough to keep them in good order or wish to waste time cleaning them.

The latest digital printers, such as the Z series from Hewlett-Packard (HP), have a built in spectrophotometer and automatic colour calibration. These impressive-sounding terms simply mean that what an artist sees on a screen or on a photograph will be produced on paper with full fidelity. The skills an artist may previously have needed from a knowledgeable digital print maker, such as colour matching, are suddenly superfluous. Now could be a very good time for an editioning artist to buy a printer.

Still, there are issues that might be best addressed with an expert. There is the choice of medium. Which inks and what type of paper to use? A small swatch of modern papers has more than 60 types to choose from, ranging from Satin Photo Paper to textured fine-art paper.

Printers with 12 ink cartridges give deeper hues than those with four, but it won't be at all predictable which print-service provider will have access to a 12-ink system or be using the aqueous pigments that give a 200 year no-fade print (providing you don't expose it to direct sunlight). An artist either needs to know what questions to ask of a printer or work with a printer who is happy to do multiple proofs of low-volume work on expensive machines that are optimised for speed and productivity.

There is also the choice between a digital inkjet printer and a modernised version of the traditional photographic print. Lambda is a Kodak system that "develops" images using a laser beam. To my surprise, make the wrong choice here and the longevity of a print can be 14 years instead of 200 years.

Fine-art digital printing is therefore far more of an arcane subject than it seems. As yet the buying public is relatively ignorant of these issues - high-end digital printers such as HP's Z3100 are only a few months old and being decisive about the use of pigments, dyes or photographic processes is difficult.

Digital-printer manufacturers (such as HP) and photographic-printer manufacturers (such as Kodak) use different test standards to judge the longevity of their respective systems. Each claim long lives and neither agrees with the other.

The short version of the story is that digital printing is actually quite complex. The fear that an artist might endlessly replicate a limited edition is as unfounded now as it was when artists worked alongside master printers. Artists who sign their work value their signatures.

The complexity lies in a series of choices that artists, customers and printers are not necessarily attuned to: photographic standards or inkjet, type of paper, type of ink. But aren't these just prints? Well, on June 21st an editioned inkjet print by photographer Thomas Ruff went under the hammer at Christie's in London. It made a total of $180,000 (€132,000).

Prints are also part of the art bubble, but even so they are a way for some people to enter the fine-art arena, a way to hang quality on their walls and a passport to a collection that might rise in value.

There can be few areas of consumer markets where so little is known by all sides of the production and consumption process.