Hanging with Your Art

January 2, 2017 2:10 PM

Turning Your Vacation Photos Into Works of Art. Some novel ideas for printing out your photos. For example, engineer prints - "Of all the ways to turn photos into wall art, I was most interested in trying engineer prints, named for the large, lightweight prints used by architects. For less than the cost of a couple of movie tickets, you can make huge enlargements. Mind you, it’s a particular aesthetic, one that’s most likely to appeal to people who are after an industrial, shabby chic or bohemian look. The paper is thin and the lines of the images are softer than a fine art print.")

Also, printing on fabric and wood. The article finishes with a survey of recommended photo-scanning services.

posted by storybored (11 comments total)

I loved this article. I regularly print and sell my stuff on wood and metal, but the engineer prints are totally new to me. Anyone have any experience with them?
posted by nevercalm at 3:46 PM on January 2, 2017

I've worked in a bunch of architectural offices and I've never heard of such a thing. We just used 20 lb white bond in large format printers after blueprinting, as a process, died. I think they might be referring to a type of paper that's a bit wispier than 20lb bond that I've seen around offices when we misordered paper, but we never liked using it. It might be 15lb or something? Probably a bit cheaper, and possibly used by much larger firms than ones I've worked for, but we generally weren't looking for "softer" lines on a print unless we were doing some kind of presentation, and then we'd go with really heavy paper.
posted by LionIndex at 4:00 PM on January 2, 2017

I used to work at a Kinkos that had an engineer's print machine — you get good detail, though they're much better suited to line work than blocks of color, as blocks of color tend to show inconsistent inking.

There are plenty of print shops around that will do engineer's prints for anywhere from $1 to $3 each, usually with a small set-up fee. But calling around would save you a ton of money over these online services.

Likewise, risographs are something that pretty much any reasonably-sized city will have a couple print shops with, since they're mostly for businesses that need a lot of cheap copies of something with spot color — menus or mailers are big uses. I haven't personally printed any art stuff with them, but have printed brochures and stuff.
posted by klangklangston at 4:03 PM on January 2, 2017 [5 favorites]

I used to work at a Kinkos that had an engineer's print machine — you get good detail, though they're much better suited to line work than blocks of color, as blocks of color tend to show inconsistent inking.

There are plenty of print shops around that will do engineer's prints for anywhere from $1 to $3 each, usually with a small set-up fee. But calling around would save you a ton of money over these online services.

Yeah, you go to any reprographics shop (should probably include "reprographics" or "blueprint" in the name of the business), and they'll charge you by the square foot. A 24"x36" print is 6 square feet, at maybe a quarter or so per (it's been a long time since I checked a bill, and we had a business discount, so I might be way off). But I wouldn't necessarily call it an "engineer's print machine" - it's just a large format copier, and their billing and order info will probably call it that.
posted by LionIndex at 4:09 PM on January 2, 2017

"I've worked in a bunch of architectural offices and I've never heard of such a thing. We just used 20 lb white bond in large format printers after blueprinting, as a process, died. I think they might be referring to a type of paper that's a bit wispier than 20lb bond that I've seen around offices when we misordered paper, but we never liked using it. It might be 15lb or something? Probably a bit cheaper, and possibly used by much larger firms than ones I've worked for, but we generally weren't looking for "softer" lines on a print unless we were doing some kind of presentation, and then we'd go with really heavy paper."

Engineer's prints are really similar to blueprints, and if you've thumbed through any municipal archives, you've likely seen them. For high contrast stuff (like a black and white line drawing), the softness doesn't really matter, and while they're a lot less common than they were 10 or 15 years ago, the advantage is that they're much cheaper for printing than even traditional copy machines are, and an order of magnitude cheaper than a laser or inkjet printer at the same size. What has killed them hasn't been so much the advent of better printing technology, but the shift to digital offices — the engineer's print machine we had wouldn't take digital input, so would only enlarge existing prints, and wouldn't do anything smaller than 11x17 output. In order to justify that, you'd have to be making several enlargements per day, and they'd be for internal use, not client presentation.

I'm all for people recognizing that you can actually get pretty great prints at an affordable price, and that pretty much any image will look better in print than on screen if it's prepared correctly, but I hope people who get these prints recognize that there's even more they could be doing with them.
posted by klangklangston at 4:16 PM on January 2, 2017

"Yeah, you go to any reprographics shop (should probably include "reprographics" or "blueprint" in the name of the business), and they'll charge you by the square foot. A 24"x36" print is 6 square feet, at maybe a quarter or so per (it's been a long time since I checked a bill, and we had a business discount, so I might be way off). But I wouldn't necessarily call it an "engineer's print machine" - it's just a large format copier, and their billing and order info will probably call it that."

Yeah, though both Fedex/Kinkos and Staples explicitly advertise "engineer's prints" (Staples starts at $1.79 per 18x24), but "reprographics" will get you a lot more specialized shops (which are often cheaper). When I was at Kinko's long ago, we just called 'em "repros," and my favorite thing to do was run them blank with the lid open, which gives you a poster-sized picture of the shop lights, which looks like a daguerreotype of the night sky.
posted by klangklangston at 4:27 PM on January 2, 2017 [7 favorites]

An issue I've run into when trying to get stuff printed locally is they have minimums on the number of pieces you order. So, a print might only cost $1.79 but you have to order 20 at a time. Anyone know if that's the case with "engineer prints?" I'm always looking for new and different ways to get editors and art buyers attention and the news prints on the Parabo Press site look awesome. If I could get those done locally in bulk that would be rad.
posted by photoslob at 5:39 PM on January 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

From just googling around, it looks like FedEx still has self serve machines. It might take a couple of tries to get the settings dialed in, but they're not hard to use if you've used any other copiers. I can't tell if they take digital submissions, and different places probably have different machines. I know that some of them can do spot color, but I don't think any can go full color.
posted by klangklangston at 8:40 PM on January 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

My local Kinkos will do them as one offs but sometimes you have to assure the clerk you know what you're getting, as they've had problems with people thinking they're getting cheap photo quality printing and refusing to pay when they see the results.

They also report that their machine sometimes has problems if the source file is larger than 10MB.
posted by Candleman at 9:15 PM on January 2, 2017

And by Kinkos, I mean Staples.
posted by Candleman at 4:50 AM on January 3, 2017

A friend sent me a street art project that she photographed and had printed out on 3'x2' sheets of newsprint. I LOVED the lo-fi quality and decorated my living room with them.

Now I'm in a new house and I want engineer prints blanketing my 80's wallpaper walls.
posted by annathea at 10:57 AM on January 3, 2017