Not a lot of fun.

Having mounted and framed the three 24″ x 36″ prints for my living room it came time to hang them. The post production time for printing, mounting, framing and hanging is a multiple of the time required to take and process the images, but there are no short cuts. Scrupulous cleanliness is dictated as even the smallest particle of grit will destroy the mounted print’s surface and white cotton gloves for handling everything are mandatory, if greasy fingerprints are to be avoided. In other words, the whole process is a royal pain.

First my son and I debated in which order the prints should be hung. After trying all the variations we decided on this:

Common Ninebark, Common Blanketflower and Flax wildflowers.

The print location is above three sets of louvered window shutters and we used a self-leveling laser level which projects a pair of 90 degree laser light lines on the wall, making alignment with the center of each pair of shutters a simple matter:

Laser level on the Linhof tripod.
A very tall ladder is involved.

As this location has a 19′ ceiling and we wanted the prints approximately half way up a very tall ladder was called for. Not much fun, I confess.

Here is the result after much struggling with this monster ladder, not to mention moving furniture around to accommodate it.

Common Ninebark, Common Blanketflower and Flax wildflowers.

A lot of work, with much fun finding the wildflowers in my community and photographing them, followed by hours of mirthless, hard labor to complete the project.

This will convey a sense of the enlargement ratio. I am holding the original of the Common Blanketflower in my right hand:

Holding the original and the print.

It’s a little easier now.

Over a decade ago I wrote about making a 36″ x 48″ print for wall display. You can read about that here. Now that was a bit of a cheat, really, as I had to assemble the final result from four tiled 18″ x 24″ prints, the largest my HP DJ90 could output. Still the result worked pretty well.

Today the largest my Epson ET8550 printer can manage is 13″ x 19″, and while that’s fine for most purposes, not to mention easy to mount, mat and frame, I recently got a hankering for something larger, and luckily have wall space to accommodate it.

The Postal Annex nearby recently installed two very large printers, a 44″ Canon and a 64″ Hewlett Packard, selling their services to those requiring large banners and posters. The HP, according to the proprietor, can print on vinyl paper for waterproof outdoor displays, but is limited to eight inks, whereas the Canon boasts no fewer than a dozen. Given that making very large prints is a once-a-decade exercise for me ownership of either of these monsters makes no sense (the HP costs a stunning $38,000), so when it came time to make three 24″ x 36″ prints I duly delegated the task and emailed the TIF files – each some 60mb in size – to Postal Annex. Four hours later saw the job completed and I was on my merry way home to attend to mounting and framing tasks, poorer for the modest sum of 3 x $45. Not at all bad, and the print quality, on Canon’s satin photographic paper, is everything one could wish for. Too bad they do not offer a glossy option.

Until mounted these prints are very fragile so the quicker this task is completed the better. I use 24.5″ wide mounting tissue and my Seal Jumbo 160M heated dry mounting press requires six ‘bites’ (90 seconds each @ 170F) to do the task after first tacking the print, tissue, and mount together using a heated tacking iron. The prices for a new press and iron are ridiculous, and given that’s there’s little to go wrong I recommend a search on eBay where the press can be found for $500 and the iron for under $50. Much of the cost of the press is for shipping as this whopper weighs a stout 60lbs. Repair parts for the press, should anything fail, are available. The press is now marketed under the D&K name, though it’s otherwise unchanged,

Six passes needed for a 24″ x 36″ print.
Release paper protects the print’s surface.

I opted for plain wooden frames with plexiglass – cheaper than glass and, more importantly, much lighter. Given that hanging the framed prints involves my least favorite pursuit – ladder time – light weight is an issue. The unstained pale wood contrasts nicely with the black backgrounds in my wildflower images. The plexiglass has a protective clear film on both sides and it does well to remember to remove this as it robs definition. Here’s the first of the three framed prints ready for hanging:

Ready for hanging.

After removing the pressed wood backing board I retain the print in the frame using a framing points driver tool. Owing to the thickness of the mounting board the backing board can no longer be installed, so a couple of hanging hooks is attached to the frame for the hanging wire.

Framing points replace the backing board, which no longer fits.
The hooks and wire came in this kit.

The all in cost of each framed print including printing and all framing materials is a reasonable $102, each.

Now it’s ladder time. Ugh!

French and best.

The French company Canson claims it has been making paper for artists for over 450 years, so you would think they have got it down by now. And my experience with Canson Infinity Photogloss Premium RC paper suggests they have.

Long time readers will know that I used an HP DesignJet 90 printer for many years. The long lived dyes in that paper mean I have prints made 20 years ago, hanging in bright sun, which remain fade free. When HP discontinued their DesignJet printers many years ago they remaindered supplies of their branded swellable paper (meaning the surface swells to absorb ink dye) and I bought some 600 sheets at a few cents a sheet. That supply lasted me for the best part of a decade until my studio dog project which between free prints to owners and further prints for local display used up some 150 sheets and printing of archival images for placement in large format albums accounted for 250 more, and counting. My dirt cheap supply of HP Premium glossy was done.

There’s a lot of clap trap surrounding fancy printing papers. Some of the worst, as my extensive tests disclosed, come from the vaunted Hahnemüle every one of which was marginal to very poor. This only went to prove just how good the HP branded product was, though I never did discover who actually made it. Most certainly it was not Hahnemüle.

I only print on high gloss paper as anything else destroys definition and dynamic range. Glossy also produces the deepest blacks. You pay thousands for your gear and then destroy definition by printing on fancy schmantzy matte paper? No thank you. Sure, matte will hide blemishes and mounting errors the answer to which is that you need to fix your technique and use glossy.

If I had a complaint about HP glossy it was that heavier areas of ink would reduce gloss locally and overall gloss would drop a tad once the print/mounting tissue/board went through the Seal dry mounting press. Also, the print needed a good 24 hours for the ink dyes to dry thoroughly.

Well, I’m happy to report that none of these issues plague the Canson paper. The gloss is very high, is not remotely reduced after laying down ink (I am using an Epson ET8550 dye printer) and, better still, is full preserved after dry mounting at 190F for 75 seconds under pressure. (Interestingly, Canson makes specific reference on its site to the surface maintaining its high gloss even after being subjected to heat). Whereas HP paper would emerge tacky from the printer the Canson product comes out dry. Obviously I cannot speak to longevity – which is largely attributable to the ink not the paper, but Epson has been in the printing business a long time so there’s reason to think they have got the ink design right.

Based on my experience Canson Infinity Photogloss Premium RC paper is strongly recommended. It weighs 270g, just a tad less than HP’s 280g, no that any of that matters if you end up mounting the print on mounting board. It costs around $2 a 13″x19″ sheet and B&H has it.

Gorgeous Hazel in the studio, my first Canson candidate.

Canson makes a broad variety of icc paper profiles including one for the Epson ET8550, and it’s what I use with Lightroom Classic.

The cryptically named
Canson icc profile in LRc.