Wood Photo Prints and Other Unique Printing Ideas
- Wood Photo Prints
- How Are Wood Photo Prints Made?
- Your True Images as Wood Photo Prints
- Wood Photo Prints Display Options
- Giclée and Standout Prints
- Custom Canvas Prints: 3 Features to Look For
- This Small Leather Photo Album is Just What Your Photos Need
Wood photo prints are a unique and beautiful printing option for your favorite images or as an excellent add-on purchase for your photography clients. Photography prints on wood look great, add interest, and are a fun addition to your home artwork.
I highly recommend wood prints from Printique, an Adorama company. In addition to picture prints on wood, Printique also produces giclee and standout prints from your image files.
We’ll look at each of these, but first, let's talk about photo prints on wood.
Table of Contents
Wood Photo Prints
First off, what are wood photo prints, and what makes them stand out?
As simple as it sounds, wood picture prints are photographic images printed on wood. Part of what makes wood photo prints stand out is the wood grain texture showing through the image.
It’s a subtle effect but instantly noticeable and recognized. I’ve seen paintings that go for the wood grain effect, which can be a stunning work of art. But with wood photo prints, the wood grain texture is not as profound as that. After all, it’s a photograph - we want our image to be seen for what it is.
Due to the nature of the material’s surface, all wood prints begin with a matte finish. Some people may want a high-gloss surface finish added to their prints, but it’s not necessary, in my opinion. I really enjoy the warmth, the depth of color, and the non-glare surface of classic wood photo prints.
How Are Wood Photo Prints Made?
Several steps are involved in getting photography prints on wood. It’s not simply a paper print that’s then mounted on a piece of wood as though it were a mat board. So how is it done?
Wood photo prints begin with procuring and preparing the wood. At Printique, the wood is fine-grain high-quality wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Each panel is a flat board that is ¾” thick with sanded edges and is heat and water-resistant.
The printing process for wood photo prints is a hands-on, artistic, and technical endeavor done by highly-trained artisan/technicians.
Dye sublimation is used for printing. This is different from regular ink printing in that the process actually infuses the material with the ink. Liquid ink is transformed into gas, pressed into the material, where it then solidifies. The ink is not on the surface, it’s actually within it.
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Your True Images as Wood Photo Prints
The medium used with different types of art often influences the final overall presentation. If you’ve ever seen early Daguerreotype photos or images printed on copper-based photographic paper, you can see the material can greatly affect the finished product.
This could be true in regards to wood photo prints as well. But with Printique wood photo prints, a different approach is used. The printing technicians manually adjust the color profile of your images to print true on the wood.
A special photo transfer paper is used, and the photo is printed on it as a reverse image. This transfer image is lined up on the wood plank and put through a heat press. The heat press turns the liquid ink into a gas, which bonds within the wood before it solidifies.
Part of the duties of the printer is to monitor the color profile of the image and adjust the dye sublimation as needed to obtain wood photo prints that are a true representation of the original image. The wood itself and the grain pattern will add a hint of warmth and a great deal of color depth.
Wood Photo Prints Display Options
The wood photo prints from Printique are finalized with a matte finish which reduces glare and allows them to be seen and admired from all angles in various settings and placements.
Wood photo prints from Printique (8x10 and smaller) are supplied with a wood photo stand for displaying the pictures on any flat surface. There are also keyholes notched out in the backside of the wood photo prints for hanging them on a wall. You can also order several different styles of frames, from modern to rustic, to enhance the viewability of your prints.
What type of photos look best as wood photo prints? We’ll cover that in a future article, but you probably already have an idea of what images you have that you want to try out as picture prints on wood.
Giclée and Standout Prints
Two other fabulous methods of printing your photo are Giclée and Standout prints.
Giclée is a high-quality style of inkjet printing using a 12-color range as opposed to the standard printing of 4-color CMYK. Giclée prints are perfect for fine art photography since the printing technique provides smoother color, hue, and gradient (light to dark) transitions and a wider color gamut. Printique uses Hahnemühlepaper for its Giclée prints for a truly artfully balanced print.
Standout prints are printed on ½”, ¾”, or 1” foam board with either white or black edges. I like to think of these prints as similar to a stretched canvas but on photographic paper. These prints work great in groups of the same or varied sizes for an art gallery-style full wall display.
Whether opting for the uniqueness of wood, Giclée, or standout prints, Printique has always delivered my images in a swift manner, with reasonable pricing (especially for Pro Service membership) and with extremely high customer service.
The art you have printed is your baby. You worked hard on it to capture it and finish it to the standard you have set for yourself. Make sure your printer is concerned with those same things. Try out one of these printing styles from Printique, especially the wood photo prints. I'm sure you’ll be as pleased as I have been!
