Digital printing

I want to share a little humble discovery: digital printing!
What is it?
Let me start from the beginning.

I bet that one of the major problems for digital artists who want to make a book portfolio is printing your work so that it look as faithful as possible to what we see on the monitor.
Ink-jet printers are the best, but not only ink and glossy paper are expensive, but also the process of printing is incredibly time consuming and frustrating.
We might waste hours printing high-res images hoping that one of the colors won’t end too quickly (usually black!) perhaps half way through the process, wasting a costly paper too.
Not to mention that most people own A4 printers. What if you want to print a nice A3? Buy a new printer? And how much extra ink would you need?

What’s the alternative? Laser prints? Terrible, always too dark and disappointing. They certainly don’t bring justice to our work.

“Digital printing” is a rather generic term, I know, and I’m not a technology geek to really know how it works, so I’ll explain it differently.
A designer friend of mine told me about this method earlier, so I had been looking for shops providing this service for a while.
A few days ago I was in a rush, in a desperate need of printing 12 images on A4 papers for a smaller portfolio.
I went to a small local photography shop that offered quite decent prices for printing digital photos on whatever paper you wanted, overnight! So I thought: if they print photos, why not digital paintings?
I gave the glossy A4 a try.
I sent them my images that night and the next day at 1pm they were already in my hands. That quick! Hong Kong is the best for these type of things really.
When I saw the result I was amazed. They were shiny and vibrant glossy sheets that gave justice to the illustrations. Colors were bright and lively. I never thought they would look this good! Sometimes even offset prints aren’t that charming!
And no pixels, nor dots, nor jagged lines…no defects at all! It was really exciting.
I only had to request to reprint two images that turned out a bit dark, but they did so immediately without extra charges.
The overall price for 12 A4 prints of this type was 30 US$ (2.5$ each), which is an excellent deal in my opinion. Imagine what I would have spent (time included) if I had decided to print them with my Epson!
They also print on A3 but for that they need at least 10 days.
I will consider it in the future, for a bigger portfolio.
Anyway, when I checked the machine they used for the job I saw a logo that simply said “Digital Printer”. I don’t know the brand, I could go check again, but it was bigger than a washing machine. Considerably so. I think it was a lot bigger than a laser printer.

I don’t know if photo shops in your place offer these services, but I believe they would. These days printing digital photos is very popular, because of the diffusion of digital cameras.
If prices are as good as here I truly recommend you give it a try.
These prints are so nice that you’d even enjoy hanging them on the wall! 😀