I feel fairly certain that wide format printing is a natural compliment to framing but I have several caveats. It is more expensive than a casual observer would imagine. There is a substantial learning curve: you need to be familiar with the theory of process color printing; you need a fundamental understanding of color theory; you need to be familiar with Photoshop’s color correction tools and image manipulation tools (Curves, Levels, the selection tools to name a few areas); an understanding of basic color management is essential. Plan on at least 6 months to get ready for reproduction printing. Photo restoration requires another set of skills.
The big problem anyone will encounter with wide format printing is the same problem anyone would encounter with offset lithographic printing: prepress. Anyone who wants to get into printing has to be able to capture an image and correct it so that it prints the colors that should be printed. Digital manipulation and Epson's dominance has made prepress a little easier than it used to be. Epson dominates the printer market because they (Seiko Inc) simply have the best and least expensive printers, currently the 9800, 7800 and 4800 printers. Anyone wanting to get started and has no prepress experience needs to have a relationship with a good prepress house.
Epson has made prepress easier than it has been in that a file printed and proofed on an Epson *600 or *800 series printer will print the same on any color managed *600 or *800 series printer. A printer profile made on a *600 or *800 will work on any other 600 or 800 printer obviating the need to custom profile individual printers (you need a separate profile for each printer/ink/paper combination you use).This consistency is a huge accomplishment. The *800 printers are a little more consistent than the *600 printers; but both represent a consistency that is a fundamental change in the industry.
As to cost in getting started, it’s probably a good deal more than someone unfamiliar with the process would guess. First there is the printer, about $3000 for a 7800 and $6000 for 9800. Photoshop is a bargain at $600. People get by without a RIP but I wouldn’t suggest trying. A RIP (raster image processor) for wide format runs around $2000 without Postscript capability and is worth it (an art printer doesn't need a Postscript RIP because Photoshop can rip EPS and PDF files). A set of inks for the printers is another $500. I’d strongly advise budgeting around $2000 for training.
You’ll need a fairly beefy computer (we use work stations; our printer workstation is a Pentium 4 with 2 gigabytes of memory, a two hard drive level 0 RAID (for very rapid reading and writing in virtual memory) and another 250 gb drive. Good quality image files are huge: a tiff file for a typical image runs around 140mb and the same file ripped runs well over a gigabyte. We have a separate workstation for scanners and a Mac G5 dual processor with 4 gigabytes memory for prepress work. In all, our lab uses 3 Windows workstations (running 2000 Workstation or 2000 pro), a Mac G4 dual processor legacy computer running OS9.*.* , and the Mac G5 (OSX.*.*). All these computers are networked. I think we are pretty standard for both a prepress and printing house. Of course, starting out, you can farm out the prepress work or combine prepress and printing on the same computer. I forgot to mention monitors. These need to be calibrated for prepress work and an entry level monitor used to be the Sony Artisan ($1500) but it’s no longer being manufactured because of the general shift to LCD. Figure about $2000 for a good LCD monitor that can be calibrated (you'll need a calibrator and software).
What you absolutely need to get started: the printer ($3000 for a 7800), Photoshop ($6-700), a recent computer with at least ¾ gig memory. Capture and prepress work you’d farm out. You wouldn't have a RIP so you'd have to print out of Photoshop (a process I found daunting) and use the Epson printer driver. Photoshop and the Epson driver will produce very good work; it's just that the process is a lot easier with a RIP. One thing, though, is that you won't be able to print really neutral B&W without a RIP; Epson seems to promise that you can with the new K3 (stands for three black inks: black, light black, and light, light black) ink set, but you can't. You'd be surprised how much B&W art work will come along.
Capture is the big expense and for the most part can be avoided by having someone else do it for you. Here I’m talking about scanners (we have an Epson 1640 flatbed, a Creo IQ Smart tabloid flat bed, a Howtek 4500 drum scanner and a Cruse wide format art scanner). Large format art scanners are hugely expensive (they are the large drum scanners of 5 years ago), starting at about $40,000 for a copy stand, medium format camera body and a scan back. And this is only a feasible option for someone who is a skilled copy photographer. To give some idea what an entry level scan back is, it can produce 40 mega pixel files (around 120mb); we've made 400mb (over 100 mega pixels) files on our Cruse. You can see why a digital camera, even the best on the market, isn’t an option. You can work around large format scanners by photographing art with a medium format film camera with transparency film, developing the film, and then scanning the transparency with a film or drum scanner. This method use to be the industry standard but is used less and less because it's very labor intensive (highly skilled labor at that) and fraught with potential errors. For photo restoration work, an inexpensive scanner like the Epson 1640 ($1,400) will work nicely and that's what we use for it. You can actually use this scanner to scan fairly large pieces by scanning in sections and then stitching the sections together in Photoshop or by using stitching software like Panavision's Image Assembler. It's not easy, but it can be done; I know people who do it, and I've done it.
Is getting into wide format printing worth the expense and effort? I think so, and it’s worked out well for me. What did I expect to get out of it? I wanted something to keep me interested in my business and intellectually challenged. We don’t promote this service heavily because until recently we weren’t very good at it, but it’ll add significantly to our revenue this year (it pulled in a little over $2000 last week, typical) and it’s certainly kept me challenged. Just about all our business comes from contacts made in the frame shops and word of mouth from there so I think wide format printing is a natural compliment to framing. We frame prints, and producing prints has to be good for business.
And then, there is DaVinci from Wizard. Epson wide format printers will accept mat board and with DaVinci you can print French mats, color white mat board, print text and images on mats. We’ve done a little bit of this work but not much. Certainly, printing multicolored images and text and French lines and borders on mat board has at least as much promise as etching monochromatic images and text with a laser. In the next year or so inexpensive flatbed printers based on the Epson 9800 print engine are going to be available. These printers will be able to print on material a couple inches thick: 1/2" foam board, gator board, sentra, plywood. I intend to get one of the first ones.
I think, though, wide format printing is an avenue that should be pursued by mature shops, shops that have developed framing as far as it can reasonably go and feel the need to add other services or that simply are ready for another challenge and that have someone with the time to invest in learning a complicated technology.
