Photograph Artwork with hi-res Professional Camera
Digitizing for Reproducing or Restoring Original Art
Many artists want to have digital archives of their original artwork, publish their artwork on the Internet, their website or just simply to email or text it. Others want to submit their work for juried evaluation or project submittals. Some simply can’t bear to part with the original and want to sell copes. In all of these cases having a color accurate, high-definition digital version of the original artwork is required to present it as an accurate representation of your work. Your artwork can be paintings, mixed media, pottery, sculpture, jewelry, etc.
Digitizing
- We offer a service to have your original artwork professionally photographed under polarized, calibrated lighting using a high-resolution 50 MB digital camera.
- We photograph accurate color charts with your images so that we can set the colors of the digital copy as close to the original as possible.
- The images are imported into Lightroom and viewed on calibrated Adobe RGB monitors where the color corrections are applied. The Artist can work with our Master Printer side-by-side to adjust the image as desired.
- The images are written to your USB drive in RAW format (DNG for portability) and archiving. Another copy is generated in JPEG format for Internet publication.
- The images will have to be cropped and may need some touch-up so you should have the ability to do some basic photo editing. We can do that for you if there is time in the scheduled session.
Reproduction – Giclée Copies
- Digital Color Matching: Copies of your artwork can be printed from the RAW files on Canvas, Fine Art Paper such as Watercolor Paper and Metal. We offer discounts to our regular printing prices and would be happy to quote you on a complete Digitizing and Printing Package.
- Printed Color Matching: If you want the closest color matched copies of your original as possible, we will need the originals when we print. Even though we get very close with the calibrated digital images, to get an exact match we have to compare the prints with the originals under the same lighting and tweak the settings and reprint until the colors match. This technique is used to make Giclée copies on canvas of original oils and acrylics; as well as watercolor originals printed on watercolor textured paper. There is a $40 processing fee in addition to the printing fee for the first print of an image. All other printed copies are discounted from or original printing costs. It is best to get a price quote before starting the exact color matching process.
Pricing and Availability
Since most artists are reluctant to turn over their original prints to someone else and want to keep their digitizing cost as low as possible, we offer the following options:
- Pacific Art League: We have teamed up with the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto to offer digitizing services, see <link to Class and Private instruction section>. The rate is $160/hr. payable to the Pacific Art League. They offer discounts from that rate for members. See their website for scheduling.
- Your Location: We also offer our digitizing service at your location and charge $320 for a two hour minimum session, in the SF South Bay Area. If required, additional time is billed at $160/hr. If your location is outside the Service Area, we will have to charge round trip travel time at $75/hr. During the two hours on site, we set up the lights and camera, photograph your images, process them and write them to your USB memory stick. Typically, we have about one hour for actual photographing, and we should get 20-30 pieces photographed in that time. Note: you can share this time with a friend if you so choose. For example, if 30 images are photographed, the cost to digitize is about $6/print.
- Artistry Printing Studio: If photographing your images at your location is not feasible, you can travel to our location in Montrey, CA. If you have 3 or less prints to digitize, the cost is only $40 per print with no minimum charge. For 4 or more prints, the rate is a flat $160/hr. with a 1 hour minimum. Additional time is pro-rated at the $160/hr. rate.
Photo and Painting Restoration
Using the Digitizing and Color Matching techniques described above coupled with Image editing software; we can restore some of the original quality of photographs and paintings. In almost all cases the resultant reprocessed image looks significantly better than the faded or damaged original. Of course, there is only so much you can do. A faded, discolored photo with much of the details missing will have limited restoration success. Most dust and scratch marks can be removed but you can’t bring back details and dynamic colors if the image no longer can differentiate between light and dark areas. The better the photo the better success we will have in its restoration. We will need to have the damaged photo to match.
Original – Jan, 1938
To sum it up, Photo restoration consists of:
Step 1. Digitizing the photo or painting under controlled lighting
Pricing: $40 each for quantities 1-3 or $160/hr (4-25+ images can be done in an hour).
Step 2. Color Matching and Image Processing
to clean up the digital Image
Pricing: $0-50 per image additional depending on the quality of the original image. We will give you an estimate after looking at the original image.
Step 3. Reprinting the restored photo
Standard Printing prices
For this work it is best to get an estimate of the total cost and expectation of what restoration level can be achieved. There is no cost for this.