Six Ways Wall Murals Can Add Sizzle to your Space.
Posted by Rick Sader on June 25, 2010 at 1:19 pmWant to make the most of your interior space? Wall murals are a compelling way to create instant ambiance and convey a message about your personality. Whether you’re relaxing with friends in your living room amid a tranquil forest scene or you want to impress clients at your office with your bold corporate vision, wall murals are a great way to achieve your interior design goals. Here are some ideas on how you can use large-format graphics to enhance your favorite spaces.
Home:
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.
Fine art reproduction is easy… if you know how.
Posted by Rick Sader on April 13, 2009 at 8:14 pmHmm, let’s see. So you just scan someone’s painting and then print it out… is that about it? Well, not quite. There are a number of ‘tricks’ to getting great results efficiently. Let’s go through the process from the beginning.
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.