Cumbria Picture Library

Art Reproduction Service

Making accurate reproductions of artists' paintings is technically one of the most demanding specialisms in photography. In recent years, significant advances in colour accuracy have been made possible by digital colour science. Traditional photographic film science and technology (meaning it's methods of measurement and the dyes used) cannot reach the accuracy of reproduction now achievable using digital methods of capture and printing. So we have developed our own Art Reproduction Service (see below).

Funded by renewed interest in the digital preservation of heritage at museum and archivist levels, research into the digitisation of artwork has become a very hot topic in colour science. A large part of Kodak's research base in America, the Munsell Color Science Laboratory, is concerned with this very subject area. We have produced more information about this topic in a series of articles -

Art Reproduction
Digital Preservation of Heritage
Longevity Ratings of Digital Prints
Mountain Art and the New Imaging Landscape

This is a specialist service both for local artists, copying their original art and producing very high quality Fine Art Giclée print master files in consultation with the artist, or for copying older paintings. These can then be printed as `limited’ or `open’ editions (assuming there is copyright), produced one at a time if required - it is not necessary to have long print runs.

Our Method

The preferred method for obtaining very accurate reproduction is by pigment measurement on individual paintings, but this is impractical as a service for most artists for economic reasons.

We have therefore developed a unique low-cost procedure that is the result of our own science-based, university research project. In practice, we still approach every painting as an individual challenge, since each artist's mix of pigments is unique, as are pigment reflective properties, and individual adjustments are made after the image has been captured.

Any size original can be photographed, either at their location or at our workplace. Colour matching is likely to be better if we have the original when printing, but when this is impractical we will work from the artist’s feedback on a proof. It is best for artwork to be removed from glass frames. The work takes about a week.

There are three stages to the work -

1. Image Capture

Your original is recorded using a specialised lens with a very high resolution digital camera, using a colour science methodology based in the research referred to above. This involves relating it to digital values in a reference target, and a specialised filter for some artists' pigments, to prevent the corruption of certain blues that typically corrupt in reproduction.

2. Digital Colour Matching

Digital colour matching is then applied to prepare the file for printing.

3. Fine Art Printing

Your prints are made using specialised printer software, onto the highest quality pure cotton rag art paper, with the best archival pigmented inks currently available. We can also print onto canvas.