Smooth Canvas

[fike]

I have been using Premier Art Smooth Canvas matte for a couple of years.  I have liked the effect because the canvas texture doesn't intrude too much on the image.  I know, I know, that is why most people use canvas....but not me.  

I talked to the folks at Inkjetart and as a replacement they recommended Illuminata Fast Dry Matte.  I think Illuminata is Inkjetart's house brand.  Has anyone worked with this canvas?  Is it smooth?

I also saw that Ilford has a canvas that they call 'smooth.'  Ilford Smooth Canvas is sold at various outlets, but it is difficult to find on their site.  Obviously they are really trying to sell this product~! http://ilford.com/en/products/galerie/smoo...ArtCanvasWF.asp

[pleverington]

I have been using Premier Art Smooth Canvas matte for a couple of years.  I have liked the effect because the canvas texture doesn't intrude too much on the image.  I know, I know, that is why most people use canvas....but not me.  

I talked to the folks at Inkjetart and as a replacement they recommended Illuminata Fast Dry Matte.  I think Illuminata is Inkjetart's house brand.  Has anyone worked with this canvas?  Is it smooth?

I also saw that Ilford has a canvas that they call 'smooth.'  Ilford Smooth Canvas is sold at various outlets, but it is difficult to find on their site.  Obviously they are really trying to sell this product~! http://ilford.com/en/products/galerie/smoo...ArtCanvasWF.asp

I would recommend you try the breathing color "Lyve". One of the nice things about it is it's smoothness and gamut. Much better price point than what you have been paying too. Call the main number and punch in #118 to get Stephen Warth. Tell him I recommended you to call him and he'll fill you in on any questions. They also have a glossy canvas that has a very large color gamut. A new coating glamour 3 is starting to be sold as we speak and is maybe the best canvas coat out there. Canvas is what this company is all about and you should at least check them out.

Paul

[fike]

Thanks for the suggestion on the Lyve canvas. I will need to try it.

I got the Illuminata canvas and it isn't bad.  It is heavier, whiter, and smoother than the Premier Art Smooth Canvas.  I am not sure that i like the cooler, whiter feel.  I have the same photo printed and coated with glamour 2 varnish mixed 2:1 glossy to matte. I need to put a second coat on before making my final verdict, but it isn't bad.  the big question is about whether optical brighteners will fade over time and make it look dull.  Also, will the added weight make it harder to attach neatly to stretcher bars.  I found the Premier Art Smooth Canvas difficult enough when compared to normal-weight canvas.

[bill t.]

The smoothest canvas I have seen recently are from Hahnemuhle...

"Monet Canvas 410 gsm 100% Cotton, Traditional Texture, Warm White"

and

"Daguerre Canvas 400 gsm, Poly-cotton, Honeycomb Texture, Bright White"

Monet is slightly finer texture than Daguerre, Daguerre is very white, Monet is noticeably off-white.  Both very sharp for a canvas.  Very nice looking images, better than average gamut for a canvas, rather well balanced if that makes sense.  But too expensive for my uses.  I use a lot of Fredrix 777 which is one of the smoother textured canvases, but not as sharp as the Hahn's.  Have not stretched any canvas recently so don't know how they are in that respect.

The best thing about all of the above canvases is that the texture is symmetrical in both directions.  My least favorite canvas surface is the kind with long carboard-like corrugations in one direction, which makes prints that look like a couple of nozzles weren't working.

Bottom line about canvas texture is that it tends to change from time to time for the same product from the same manufacturer.  I have occasionally been surprised, sometimes rudely as with the the "new improved" texture on Epson Premium Canvas Matte which pretty much ruined an otherwise great canvas...IMHO.

[reburns]

I would like to experiment with some canvas to print some oil paint reproductions for a friend.  The concern is the texture of the inkjet canvas will interfere with the copied texture of the original oil painting canvas.  I will also experiment with the canvas for various photographs.  Wouldn't I want a fine weave canvas for these?  I'm tempted by the Breathing Color Lyve for the price, but the phone description made it sound quite typical for canvas texture, although without "yarn stipple lumps".  No Lyve (or Fredrix?) samples are available, but I can always get samples of the Hahne.  A critical factor will be how good the 7900 profiles are for these materials as I don't do my own profiling.  I'm new to canvas so whatever is easiest to use, mount and coat might be the best choice for learning.  
Thanks, Ralph

[dgberg]

Lyve does have samples. A very good price too. The 17" X 20' roll. It is a small roll and goes quick when you start making sample prints.
Now if you were thinking sample sheets of canvas ,have not seen any. I have tried them all as our business is printing canvas. Have found the Lexjet Matt to be the best value of them all.
Tried several of the glossy canvases and do not use them anymore. When printing on the Matt canvases we just adjust the final sheen with the GlamorII coating mixture of 75% gloss 25% satin.
Makes for a real nice semi gloss finish. As far as texture is concerned I have never really made it part of the canvas choice process. A medium texture is a good thing for my landscapes. And most canvas textures in my eyes are fairly even.
I have the 7900 and the profiles are right on.

[reburns]

Here's a couple images I'm referring to with the first showing my buddy's 17.5" wide painting and a close-up showing the painting's canvas visual.  I wonder how to print this on canvas without introducing a moire-type effect between oil canvas and inkjet canvas?  That's why my thinking gravitates towards finer weave material like Hanhe Monet suggests.  I'll re-shoot the paintings with my latest gear and also run a color chart calibration in the same setup.  My painter friend and I are both learning, so it's a good low-pressure situation.  

The 2nd canvas print request is from some snaps taken during a flyfishing weekend.  See the attached a typical image and high-frequency grasses.  

1. & 2. Given these two images, what canvas and top-coat would you suggest?  Do you recommend going thru the effort of blending GlamourII gels for a guy who will take a long while to burn thru a roll of canvas?  Also it's tempting to just bet on a roll of Lyve or Monet and skip buying samples.

3. & 4.  Also how much material is lost stretching?  I.e. What's the maximum width I can expect out of the 24" printer?  And is there a reference you would point me to to learn the stretching process?  I suppose I'm into this for the learning experience.

Thanks so much, Ralph
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jpg][attachment=17041:2009_09_..._6114xsm.jpg]

[dgberg]

Max width for 24" canvas is right around 19".  With 1 1/2" stretcher bars. Gallery stretcher company has a video showing the stretching and stapling process.
And the best way to learn this is to come to my canvas workshop for the day. One on one or with a group. We are just getting things setup. Call our 800# and we will answer any questions you may have.
A big void on the east coast for a quality canvas workshop experience. We plan to offer one every other month. The one on one comprehensive course will be available any time of year as long as I am available.

[bill t.]

Coat with GlamourII or Clearhield Type C.  GlamourII is less smelly and is cheaper (because of dilution), Clearshield probably has better UV protection and does not have to be diluted.  If you must spray or roll your coatings indoors, GlamourII is your best pick since it makes the room less inhabitable, but neither coating is really awful smellwise since they are both water based.  Don't even consider using solvent based coatings indoors, best to just not choose a canvas that requires solvent coating.  Plain glossy GlamourII produces a finish that is closer to Satin than gloss, and is to my eye very attractive.   I use it without any Matte mixed in, diluted with 33% to 40% water for either vertical HVLP spraying or horizontal rolling.  If you can manage to HVLP spray horizontally, a 45% water dilution will give you the glossiest finish you can get with that material.

The amount of material you need for stretching varies with intent and your stretcher bar width.  But it is always more than you would like.  To gallery wrap where the canvas is attached to the back of the stretcher bars, you'd better think about 3" on each side for medium width stretcher bars, otherwise you just can't get an adequate grip.  If you're going to frame the canvas you can staple to the sides in which case as little as 1" all around is ok, but 1.5" is better once again to get a good grip for stretching.  Personally I hate stretching, I glue my canvases to Gatorfoam and can't say enough good things about it.  Fact is, a 40"+ printer is the best choice for canvas work that will be stretched.

Those vertical grasses are the real test of canvas texture, and canvases with textures that are more elongated in one direction than the other can fail pretty badly in those cases (IMHO).  Well, they may look OK but you and I will know there's more to be seen and it will gradually eat away at our opinion of the print.  Also you will probably not see the full extent of the grass details on relatively small prints.  I have some extremely high resolution grass field panos and I don't even begin to see the full fineness of texture until I'm printing more than about 200 image pixels per inch of canvas such as a 40" high print on a 8000 pixel high image file.  And oh how $weet a print like that is!

[dgberg]

Bill T.
Read your bio and quite impressed.
Your panos are very special as well.
Would you care to share the camera and lens used?

[reburns]

Thanks so much Bill (& Dan),

I indeed rounded up some some Epson canvas yesterday and tried out the prints on the 7900.  I learned something significant -  for even the "dry brush" painting shown above the fabric hand of the inkjet canvas is indeed insignificant.  The inkjet out-resolves the dry brush visuals so the image of painted fabric threads are printed well regardless of where the inkjet canvas fibers fall (hope that makes sense).

I learned that the profile, gamut and Dmax of the canvas are more significant.  On the print with the fishermen in the grass, yellows wanted to dominate and I had a hard time juggling between punching some blacks and keeping the shadows from becoming completely blocked up.  Handling color shifts is a personal struggle as I'm fairly colorblind.  By comparison printing the fishermen on Epson FA Velvet yielded miles more tonal range & separation.  After reviewing the softproof out-of-gamut oranges in another fall foliage shot and in blues from my buddy's desert painting shown above and figuring gamut is king, I installed the profile for Breathing Color Lyve to compare.  Softproof gamut warnings showed up in the painting's blues for both Lyve and Epson Satin canvas, but less so for the Epson Satin.  This surprised me after hearing reports about Lyve's gamut.  Confused about what not to believe.  

For the painting I tried older Epson Satin Canvas, and for the fishermen in the grass tried older Epson Matte Canvas (& Velvet & EEF) on 13x19" sample pieces.  So basically hats off to skilled canvas printers - it seems a step beyond other papers.

[bill t.]

Dan, those were almost all shot with a Nikon D2X, mostly with handpicked 55 or 28mm prime lenses, vertical orientation.  The single rows look good up to about 30" high, the double rows will go up to 40+ inches high and still look tack sharp.

reburns, the thing about canvas in comparison to standard papers is that you have to work in the mid tones, and be very careful not to push stuff too far down into the dark tones.  Basically your canvas shadow detail starts at something like 20:20:20 so the trick is have some punchy max-d areas less than about 8, but make sure you get well separated and smoothly ramped shadow transitions building up from the low 20's.

In transitioning from papers to to canvas I wasted too much time trying do "print down" canvas like I could with Epson Luster, but that just doesn't work out with canvas.  Having finally sorted things out I now prefer the more open look that works best with canvas.  Open style canvas print "show" much better in all types of lighting conditions but especially in less than optimal lighting situations in homes where there is rarely any direct print lighting.

You will initially get the impression that yellows and oranges are sort of out-of-control but the trick there is to print them very light so the saturation doesn't go ruddy.  Makes for very luminous looking prints, I can print yellows much lighter on canvas than I ever could with Luster and still have them look solid.

As far as gamut goes, there certainly is technically less of it with canvas.  But OTOH canvas has its own special look and offers a wide variety of possible interpretations of the image.  The best prints I can make on canvas do not leave me wanting to return to standard papers.  There's more to the look of an image than the absolute gamut.

But bottom line is, all the standard printing files I had so finely tweaked for Luster were out the window when I switched to canvas, had to redo everything including my previous ideas about printing.

[dgberg]

Thank you Bill,
I still shoot my panos with D2Xs  and D300 and am getting pretty good results. I was looking at the full frame D3X for this work but will now hold out for a D700X. Gosh what will those file sizes be.
Just yesterday I shot a 2 row 22 frame pano and the size was 856mb. Did the stitching in autopano pro and then sent it to Genuine Fractals 6 to do the gallery wrap extensions.
It came back in Lightroom as a 650mb file. (24 X 36) I had only slightly cropped the edges so it was still almost the origional file size. Is this just a function of the final size I chose and I actually could have gone larger?
Not a big deal just the first time I saw that large of a file reduction.
Dan