Breathing Color Blog

Here’s my view….In 2004, there were a few early adopters or perhaps “risk takers” that delved into the solvent printing world! Prior to this, these decor art publisher/printing companies had been operating production and producing giclee prints with aqueous inks on Iris, Epson and Roland printer’s (such as the Epson Stylus Pro 9800, Epson Stylus Pro 7800, Epson Stylus Pro 4800). The Roland 540, 740 Sol-Jet and Mimaki Jv3 solvent based printers produced the best giclee print quality and resolution. Solvent technology now appealed to some canvas transfer companies and they embraced digital canvas printing. At this time Giclee was really acceptable on all levels……finally! Fine art inkjet canvas was making a big splash in the market now. The goal for these companies was to break into the hotel market, furniture outlets and mainly big box stores digitally with a giclee canvas art prints at an extremely competitive price. The price point at this level was unobtainable with their current water based giclee printing technology. Before this transformation took place, the giclee art prints provided by suppliers for big box stores were lithography canvas and digital prints imported from overseas. The materials costs were too high for ink and canvas, along with the extra steps in production like top-coating canvas. These businesses had to be more responsive with faster turnaround times and more efficient print speeds. They had to manufacture a canvas print at the absolute lowest cost possible. Of course the image quality had to meet this market standard. This digital solvent canvas product was far superior to the competition.