4 Features to Look for in a Metal Print
- Superb Metal Print Materials
- Metal Print Dye Sublimation Process
- The Best Equipment and the Right People
- Metal Print Supplier Professional Perks
- Recommended Photography Gear
- FAQs about Printing Photos on Metal
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Hanging up a metal print of your photography creates an eye-catching display that is hard to miss and can be quite stunning.
Printing on metal is a special process for photographic images that has become decidedly mainstream, with many online companies offering metal prints. To help you choose where to have your metal prints made, we have compiled a list of a few things to look for in a metal print.
Table of Contents:
Superb Metal Print Materials
To get the best metal print possible, you need to start out with the best material available. In the world of aluminum panels for metal prints, the industry standard is ChromaLuxe. Shiny Prints is an authorized ChromaLuxe Lab, meaning they are approved by ChromaLuxe and must meet their high standards to maintain that authorization.
ChromaLuxe aluminum panels for making a metal print have an unblemished surface and are optimized for the dye sublimation process. These panels are extremely durable; independent testing shows 65-year archival stability. So, any metal print you make will look great for a long, long time.
These panels aren’t just archival; they are also resistant to damage. They are scratch-resistant and water-resistant. You can even wash off these panels, so there are no worries about accidental spills or deliberate marring, such as graffiti.
The EXT version of ChromaLuxe panels takes it up a notch, being designed for outdoor use. Your metal print can become exterior signage for a business or be displayed in an outdoor gallery.
A metal print can be hung up on a wall in various ways, from corner posts to hidden rear-mounted cleats, which give your metal print the illusion of hanging right next to the wall. This is part of what makes printing on metal such a fantastic option: that thin yet completely solid large print needs no other support other than itself.
Metal Print Dye Sublimation Process
Shiny Prints uses the dye sublimation process for creating its metal prints. What is dye sublimation?
In many printing processes made from digital files of photographic images, the substrate material has inks applied to the top. With some substrates, the ink penetrates further than in others, making the inks more or less part of the surface structure of the material.
Dye sublimation takes this several steps further. With the dye sublimation process on a metal panel, the image more or less becomes the metal print itself.
The image is first printed on transfer paper with inks substantially different from ordinary ink. This transfer paper is attached to the aluminum panel, and then heat and pressure are applied. This dual process causes the dye inks to infuse into the metal.
The result is that the image is not printed ON the aluminum; rather, the panel becomes the metal print - the image is transferred INTO the metal. Since the image is actually part of the substrate, the image is archival in permanence.
The Best Equipment and the Right People
At Shiny Prints, all they do is make metal prints. The equipment they use is specifically designed for or adapted to this process of using aluminum panels and dye-sublimation transfers. They use state-of-the-art machines and only use the inks made for them and approved by the manufacturer.
I hope you will enjoy seeing my in-depth review of a metal print order from Shiny Prints. It’s on our own Photography Talk YouTube channel:
The technicians at Shiny Prints should be called artisans since they apply everything they know and do to create a work of art from your digital image file. In addition to being that good at what they do, they also add a layer sadly missing from many lower-end photography support businesses: excellent customer service.
Metal Print Supplier Professional Perks
Making the perfect metal print is the daily output of Shiny Prints. What makes them a great printing company for serious photographers and pros are the perks. I already talked about their superbly trained printing personnel and excellent customer service.
Some other perks include custom shapes and very large sizing for your metal print, Shiny Print + ChromaLuxe warranty, client support, and loyalty pricing for a competitive edge. Try them out for yourself or for a valued client and see how amazing a metal print of your photography can look.
Recommended Photography Gear
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