From Screen to Paper: A Short Story About Why Artmedia Was Born

Artmedia is a specialized printing and image processing studio where the starting point for every newcomer is to understand the benefits of working under its expertise. But it always reaches a point where this question cannot go unasked of the customer: “How many times have you had the experience of seeing on the screen what you get in the final print?” The answer almost always comes with a degree of doubt and a negative: “It's never the same on both.”
And if I ask whether it is possible to get the same result in printing with different substrates, the answer is generally the same: “No!” Most people say: "It's impossible, since matte, satin, or glossy papers cannot produce similar printing outcomes.”

When ArtMedia was born in the early 2000s, my challenge was to ensure color consistency between what appears on screen and the final print. To achieve this goal, I had 8 years of prior experience working at Desarrollos Compumedia, a digital prepress company, where I worked all day with images: scanning, calibrating, retouching, among other tasks, and attended to clients in person. There, I developed a sensitivity in understanding images and their different challenges, guided by my boss and mentor at the time, Denys Frank.

With that background, when I left the prepress company, I went independent and started working on my own. My first commission was a printing job for a client: I took the same file to 5 different places, and the results were completely disappointing — none matched the color I had on screen. “My question was: if my monitor is calibrated, why weren't they getting similar color outcomes?”

I resorted to running a color proof at the company where I had previously worked to present that print to my client. I knew the colors could come out right, though with the limitation of a 12 x 18 in. size.

It was there that the whole experience made me realize there was a widespread problem with color in printing, and I needed to understand what was happening — because my file had the right colors. So what was going wrong when it went through a printing system?

That was the moment when the challenge grew: I had to offer a printing service where what you saw on screen matched the final print, since the market did not. So I began researching which printing system was most suitable, which inks would not shift over time, and how to implement a professional Giclée printing system.

Everything was coming together: I found what type of plotter to use, which pigment-based inks were most appropriate, and how to implement them. However, one final problem remained: I did not want to rely on a driver to print. The driver had thousands of combinations, which did not guarantee that relationship between what you see on screen and what you see in the final print. That was when I got in touch with a color management specialist. In the early 2000s, color management was used only to produce color proofs for offset printing presses. The challenge with this specialist was to make what I wanted possible: no unexpected color mistakes between the computer screen and the final print. It was a difficult task — many days of work and very costly — but we finally achieved it. We were the first and only ones in Venezuela to implement this system for Giclée, or fine art printing. To our great surprise, 10 years later, Epson would incorporate the same system into its plotters in 2010.

Printing is not something that can be taken lightly. Many people think it's just a matter of pressing a print button — but it is a complex subject that requires prepress knowledge: understanding image processing, color calibration, print parameters, and everything related to professional management systems, as well as personalized attention to ensure the artist's vision is honored. That is what is fundamental to achieving an excellent print.