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Children’s Rooms—Watch your kids beam with delight when they enter their special room for the first time, and every time after that. Enchant your daughter with a wall of horses grazing in a meadow, or inspire your sporty son with a wall of his favorite baseball players in action. Kids’ rooms can be transformed into a tropical jungle or an  underwater paradise, all with the use of vibrant and durable wall murals.

Scenery—Looking to add some urban edge to your abode? Perhaps a black and white image of your favorite city skyline will offer that punch you’ve been looking for. Interested in bringing serenity into your home? A sweeping Tuscan vista could be the perfect fit. Wall murals can turn plain hallways into lush forests, mountain ranges, or soothing tropical beaches. Scenic wall murals don’t just add beauty to a room; they’re also wonderful conversation pieces.

Personal Photographs—You’ve always thought that stunning sunset photo you took on vacation would look amazing as a mural. Make it happen! Turn your digital images into art and your walls into representations of the people and places you love. For example, a mundane laundry room would be much more pleasant space when its walls showcase a larger-than-life tribute to, say, the family pet or last summer’s trip to the lake.

Art/Design—Abstract designs and artistic images are just as good at conveying mood and atmosphere as photographs. Incorporate your favorite colors and motifs into your home with an artistic mural suited to your personality. Decorate your bedroom with a whimsical mural of parrots in flight. Impress guests with a cubist painting filling up a space in your entryway. And why not make your breakfast nook ceiling look like a calming summer sky?  The sky really is the limit when it comes to wall designs, so let your imagination run wild.

Business:

Promotional—Do you want to get the word out about your company’s tech expertise? Are you proud of your company’s history or your new logo? The walls of your business can easily be transformed into a captivating, promotional medium that will show your customers or clients exactly what you do best. You can convey a message and visually delight visitors at the same time.

Ambiance—How do you want people to feel when they visit your business? If you’re a dentist and want to instill a sense of calm, you could turn a wall in the lobby into a serene, bubbling brook. If you own a restaurant, you might add atmosphere with a wall showing a scene from your cuisine’s heritage. When you’re hosting customers, you’re in the marketing business. Give people a reason to drop in—with bright, beautifully printed wall graphics that people will remember.

Don’t want to cover an entire wall?  You can still add small, contour-cut accent pieces to spruce up what’s there now.  Beautiful fall leaves, whimsical snowflakes, or bold, flowing abstract designs are just a few of the possibilities. Because they’re so versatile, wall murals and contour-cut wall graphics provide an effective and visually exciting solution to any interior design challenges you might have. Think of them as a unique way to add character and atmosphere to any room. From serious and subtle to playful and bold, wall murals are the new secret weapon in interior design.

Imagine being a vendor at the World Travel Market in London. It’s the world’s biggest tradeshow for the travel industry and features over 5,000 international companies displaying exhibits for over 45,000 discerning participants. How do any of them hope to stand out? A great-looking booth is the first step.

Whether you’re in advertising, retail, interior design, or any other industry that uses tradeshows to spread the word about your company’s innovative products, you’ll need to distinguish yourself from the crowd to be successful.  Carefully crafted, superior quality visual displays are a great way to give your company the edge. If you have excellent graphics to add impact to your message, people will be more likely to notice your exhibit at the show and, more importantly, remember it later. It’s vital to choose the right combination of media and printing technology to deliver colors that pop and crisp visuals that capture every detail.  Here are a few options that will make your next trade show display attention-grabbing and unforgettable:

Retractable banner stands

Seeking a solution with maximum vibrancy and durability at low cost? Try graphics printed on polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP) banner material.  They’re made from recycled bottles and printed with water-based inks. And lamination will add protection as well as a variety of finishes including glossy, luster, or semi-matte.  Try positioning three or four of these low-cost banner stands together to build one big, knockout image that won’t break your budget.

Graphics mounted to display boards

Keep your graphics looking fresh by mounting them onto sturdy, light-weight display boards.  A variety of materials are available.  Choose light-weight Gatorboard for ease of transport.  Or Sintra for maximum durability.  Or try Eco-Board; a strong corrugated display board made from 94% recycled cardboard.  Pair that with graphics printed with water-based inks onto our FSC-certified coated paper and you’ll be the greenest exhibitor at the show.

Fabric table drapes

Every aspect of your tradeshow booth should highlight what’s great about your products. Fabric table drapes offer a unique way to give your display a high-end finishing touch. A number of fabrics are available for large-format inkjet printing of your logo and branding message. Egyptian Sailcloth and Venetian Heavy Canvas are two popular polyester fabrics that have the look and feel of canvas.

Non-slip floor graphics

Want to take advantage of a high-traffic yet under-utilized space for getting your message across? Just look down.  Use your floor space to your advantage and give passersby something interesting to look at in an unexpected spot! And don’t worry; they’re non-slip and won’t damage the floor when removed.

Backlit displays

You’ve seen these lighted displays at the airport and the mall.  They’re a great way to add that extra ‘punch’ to your message.  Backlit display boxes for tradeshows are lightweight and allow for easy changing of the graphics.  So now you can keep your message fresh from season to season, show to show, or even hour to hour.

Your business is to wow the crowd.

Our business at Lone Eagle Digital Imaging is to help you to do it with flair.

Not convinced?  Here’s an example.  I’ll describe a traffic accident scene to you and see if you can picture it in your mind.  Or maybe even try to sketch it out.  Here we go:

“There was a three-car pileup on an icy road.  A small, black car skidded on the ice and was then rear-ended by a red car.  That car was then rear-ended by a white van which left long skid marks on the road before coming to a rest.  There were no injuries but the left lane was partially blocked for about an hour.”

OK…. how’d you do?  Pretty easy to get an image in your mind, right?  But was the image you conjured up exactly like the real accident scene?  At what angles were your cars positioned?  What portion of each car got hit?  As you can imagine, conveying the actual events to a jury in court (and having them remember all that in the deliberation room) can mean the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.

Here’s an illustration of the scene created by a graphic designer from a sketch and photos provided by the officer responding to the scene.  This illustration leaves very little open to interpretation and is much easier for the jury to remember & discuss.

Courtroom graphics can be a valuable resource in the courtroom.  Got the picture?

Fine art reproduction requires a number of steps to be done properly.  The first step is the scan.  High resolution flatbed scanning is one way to digitize original artwork.  The first ‘trick’ is to use high enough resolution so that you’re feeding enough information to Photoshop in the retouching stage and ultimately to the printer in the printing stage.  Typically, scans at 300 – 360ppi (pixels per inch) at the full dimensions should suffice.  Higher resolution will be required if the artist would like prints larger than the original.  The second ‘trick’ is to use the RGB color mode.  If you use any other color mode, then the printer will make a conversion that may introduce color shifts.  The third ‘trick’, if you’re really meticulous, is to use 16bit color instead of 8bit.  This will give very fine gradations in color that may be required for some peices.  The downside is that this results in 2x larger digital file sizes.

The fourth ‘trick’ is to include a grayscale taget within the margin of the scan.  This is a small 12-step grayscale piece that allows you to adjust the white point, black point, and neutral gray once you move the image into Photoshop. This step is critical.

Once in Photoshop, the “levels” command makes the white, black,and grayscale adjustments a breeze.  As with any fine tuning done to the image, make sure to use adjustment layers.  This allows you to tweak the adjustment, change its blending mode and opacity, or delete it without altering the original file…. very handy.  These adjustment layers may include things like saturation, hue, levels, curves, etc.  If you’re looking at your image on a calibrated monitor (you are calibrating your monitor, aren’t you?) then these adjustments will help you to tweak the digital file so that ultimately the print looks like what you see on your monitor.

ICC profiles for your printer, ink, media, & print resolution are also required to get great results.  You may be able to download generic profiles but the best option for high-quality fine art reproduction is to create your own.  There are a number of hardware/software systems available.  A final step in the retouching process is usually adding a small amount of sharpening.  Don’t overdo it.

Now it’s time to print a proof.  Usually a small print on the intended media will suffice.  This will allow you to check the tone, color accuracy, color saturation, etc.  At this point, it’s important to compare your proof to the original under proper lighting.  A sneaky, sinister thing called metamerism is lurking in the darkness, waiting to trip you up.  Metamerism refers to the fact that a color may look different under different types of lighting.  The original and the proof may ‘match’ under the (ugh) flourescent lights in your office but they may be way off under natural sunlight or in the gallery.  If you don’t have a 5000K light booth, then just take your prints outside in the natural daylight.  At this point, you may need to adjust the saturation, tone, etc. to get a better match.

I recently completed a very successful fine art reproduction job for a local watercolor painter, Dr. William Robinson.  Bill is a very talented, self-taught portrait artist.  His most recent work was a very cute portrait of his granddaugher, Miranda.  All of the steps outlined above were followed in order to translate his original watercolor painting into a digital file that could be printed quickly and accurately onto Epson Somerset Velvet Fine Art Paper using an Epson 9600 inkjet printer.  This printer uses the Epson 7-color UltraChrome inkset which will resist fading for many decades. Various sizes were printed according to the client’s wishes.  See Bill’s website for more examples of his beautiful work.

It all starts in the design phase. What look do you want for your Italian restaurant, or hair design salon, or wine bar, or corporate office, or home? A huge range of ready-to-go stock photography exists or a digital photographer can be commissioned to get exactly the image you need. Or the graphics you want can be designed digitally. Some of the most talented artists around now work digitally, producing all of the styles mentioned above using not paint & brushes but Photoshop & Illustrator. Their brush is a mouse and their paints are pixels. The artwork you want can be created, customized, and modified quickly to get exactly what you want.

A huge range of media exists for producing the mural with large-format digital printing. Vinyl media embossed with various textures are available that look like canvas, leather, suede, a rough plaster finish, smooth, sandblasted, paper maché, …you name it. These over-lapping prints are then installed like ordinary wallpaper with ordinary wallpaper adhesive to produce any size mural you’d like. Other interesting media include fabrics with a low-tack adhesive on the back. This allows the graphics to be easily repositioned, removed, and re-used without leaving adhesive residue on the walls.

In mid March ’09, I had a successful collaboration with a traditional wall mural painter to produce an 8’x25’ wall mural for a new restaurant in Woodinville, WA. How? Ann Fiser painted a beautiful, colorful, & fun mural at ½-scale (still pretty big) and then had it professionally photographed by Alex Rubin. The (very large) digital file was then transmitted to me for scaling up and large-format digital printing onto a matte-finish media specifically made for wall murals. The seven, large, over-lapping strips were then hung with typical wallpaper paste by Steve Orban, a professional wallpaper hanger. The owners at Teddy’s Bigger Burgers in Woodinville, WA love the end result.  For more info, see the lead article in this month’s Lexjet’s “Expand” newsletter (volume 4, number 4). Lexjet is a supplier of large-format equipment, media, ink, & other supplies.