hello my loves and welcome back or welcome if this is your first time on my channel today
i wanted to jump back into a topic that i've touched on on my channel in the past just
going a little bit into some more detail to share my full process for printing quality
accurate archival art prints at home if you're interested in a really in-depth video walkthrough
on how i scan edit and prepare my work for print i have a full demo of that on patreon
which i will have linked below but generally the bare bones of what you need to know about
that is that i use a canon caniscan lide 300 scanner i scan between 300 and 600 dpi and
when i'm adjusting the scan in photoshop i work in a cmyk workspace and i make sure to
export with those color settings as well now when i'm printing at home i export my images
as jpegs purely because that is one of the only file types that is accepted by the printing
software that i use and i personally have found the sharpest and most color accurate
results in my prints when i use that software so with that let's get into software and hardware
my printer is the epson expression photo xp 970 and i previously used the 960 which is
the older model before this one and it was great it was everything i needed it just got
to the point where it printed too many things i believe after about five years of quite
heavy use i print at least 200 to 300 prints a month for patreon and after several years
of that my old printer just said i'm tired i'm done so i upgraded to the next model up
it's exactly the same it's just a little bit newer and i chose this printer because it
prints up to a3 size it offers double-sided printing and it also does borderless printing
which is really useful it takes really quality inks that last up to 300 years without fading
and it just has lots of great reviews from other artists and photographers who have used
it they've mentioned the accuracy and the richness of the colors the highlights shadows
the sharpness of the prints that you can get um i will say it's not like the fastest or
quietest printer and i'm sure that there are plenty of other great options out there but
those are just the general qualities in a printer that i think you should be looking
for regardless of the brand or model that you choose before we go on i just want to
pop in with a quick word from our sponsor skillshare i've been taking classes with skillshare
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i've mentioned before is cat cochlear class on print on demand success that i think anyone
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the art and preparing and marketing it to sell and another couple of classes that i
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launch how to open an etsy shop like a professional seller and also amaryllis henderson's class
setting up shop sell fantastic prints which goes into the ins and outs of branding order
fulfillment and even photographing your work and i will have those classes linked below
if you're interested and the first thousand people to use my link will get a one month
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with thousands of online classes that you can watch ad free to make the most of a fully
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german but i just think that is such a brilliant and useful feature to give even more people
access to the quality premium classes that launch every single week so again don't forget
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all of the other classes that you can find on skillshare to boost your creativity and
your career now back to printing the inks i use are epson's own brand of inks for this
printer i have said it before i don't know if it's a scam the price of these inks definitely
feels like a scam but it does make sense that the inks that they make are designed and formulated
to work best with their printers so i just choose not to mess around with that i also
know from experience that these inks do hold up well they don't tend to smudge depending
on what paper i'm printing on and like how long i've left them to dry and also depending
on the colors that i use a set of these inks will usually last me from maybe around 500
either 5x7 to a4 printed sheets of paper speaking of paper one of the most important things
that i have learned about printing at home is just the difference in quality that you
can get just from choosing the right surface to print on the epson archival matte paper
has always been one of my favorites for prints i also love buckingford's watercolor inkjet
paper it has a really lovely texture to it the colors come out beautifully on it and
there have been so many times that i've printed on this paper and ended up preferring the
print to the original painting when i'm looking for paper i usually search for archival inkjet
paper and then i'll get more specific on top of that with like the finish of the paper
depending on what i'm printing what i want it for so i might search for glossy archival
inkjet or matte or silk and i tend to go for brands that i already know brands already
make paper that i like so rocking third canson han muller which i'll never be able to pronounce
and i will leave links below to everything i talk about in this video but finding the
right paper can be a bit of trial and error once you find it though your print quality
just skyrockets i have printed on cheaper paper in the past and things come out faded
and not very sharp also if you're having trouble even with higher quality paper make sure you're
printing on the right side because these papers are specially treated to take ink in a certain
way and so if you're printing on the back of the page it might not give you the same
quality as you would get from the front so coming to software i use the epson easy photo
print software i find the files that i want to print i input the quantity the size of
the print the size of the border if any i will choose the paper type and the print quality
and also where i want the printer to get the paper from there are three different sections
for paper in this printer so i usually use the rare paper tray for larger prints or for
small fiddly ones that the inside of the printer can't pick up properly and then the bottom
tray i almost always have a4 paper in and then for postcard size prints or 5x7 i use
the middle tray so i just specify on the software which part of the printer i want the paper
to be collected from for each print and it can actually detect it automatically you can
set the settings to auto and the printer will figure out where to choose the paper from
on its own i just prefer to know that it's going to use the right paper for the right
prints every time now the software is a bit old and a little bit clunky and as i said
you can only really print jpegs and they can't be too big in file size however i have tried
a million different ways of printing my art at home from different settings printing directly
from photoshop to exporting as tiffs or pdfs and this method using jpegs in the epson software
has consistently given me the best results if anyone else knows of a better way or a
newer epson software please let us all know but honestly this works for me just fine the
only other thing i would say about printing your art at home is think about if it's worth
it for me i love doing limited runs of signed prints for my shop and i use my printer to
make a batch of limited edition prints for patreon each and every month but i wouldn't
make and sell prints of all of my work all of the time like this for me it makes much
more sense to have my work on imprint for people to have access to high quality prints
of my work at all times that i don't actually have to print and pack and send out to people
every time an order comes in when i'm printing my work at home and this might just be a me
thing i prefer to work in batches to know that i'm doing a certain amount of prints
so i need a certain amount of paper and a certain amount of ink and i will print them
all at once and once they're gone they're gone but also using a print on demand service
alongside that allows people to still get their hands on my work even if i don't actively
have anything in my shop at the time so i think it's worth weighing up the time that
goes into creating your own prints the expenses like paper ink the printer itself and the
markup that you would have to sell them at to make a profit also the advantages of printing
your own work like being able to adjust it down to the minutest detail experimenting
in different paper and the finishes that you'll get from that and being able to add personal
touches like a signature and your own packaging which i suppose you could also do by outsourcing
your printing like having a batch of prints made elsewhere then shipped to you and then
you package them and ship them when people order them so weigh up all the options consider
whether the cost and the stress of temperamental printers because there is always there's always
something that goes wrong with printers and it's always something different every time
just work out if the pros outweigh the cons for you and consider your other options like
using print-on-demand services like imprint or sending your workout to be printed elsewhere
like with awesome merchandise printed.com and tons of other places a lot of which will
offer um really quality gclay art printing services as well which i don't even know if
you can do that at home well like me you can just do a little bit of all three let me know
if you have any questions on anything that i've talked about today and feel free to suggest
any other videos that you'd like to see from me thank you so much for watching and i will
see you soon in the next one bye
you