Scanning & Photographing your art
Ultra-sharp, direct scans from artwork of any size and type at the shop or in your studio – made with a custom-built digital capture system with a high precision sensor that provides unmatched detail and color fidelity.
Safe, cool, UV-free lighting with KinoFlo® patented light banks allows for an infinite flexibility in bringing out the character of your work. We offer decades of expertise in documenting original artworks, from drawing to sculpture – now in completely digital format.
Click here for pricing guide and technical details.
Fine art printing
As the only Hahnemuehle, Canon, Canson and Epson Digigraphie-certified Canadian printing bureau, we are pleased to offer outstanding fine art digital inkjet printing using archival pigment inks and cotton rag papers. Both watercolour and coated papers are available, with various textures – from ultrasmooth to heavily toothed, as well as artist canvas with different finishes. Choose from baryta papers for luxurious photographic look or go with 100% cotton rag papers for a flat matte, fine art presentation. We carry absolutely best papers available today, from paper mills in Germany, France, Italy and Japan.
Click here for the pricing guide, technical details and info on how to set-up your images for printing.
Making reproductions of existing works
Combining three different technologies – high-precision scanning, digital color correction and fine art printing – allows us to achieve incredibly lifelike reproductions of original works of art.
However, there are lots of complexities with a proper execution of this simple concept.
Click here if you are interested in learning about what it takes to make an outstanding repro print.
Retouching, compositing & color correction
Competent, affordable Photoshop work for all sorts of art, photography and print projects.
Expert color correction / layout / color-matching for jobs that have to look just right. From simple masks and close-cutting, to raw processing, up-sampling and touch-ups, to complex composited scenes – we offer over 30 years of our retouching expertise to artists and media companies. Latest tools, powerful workstations, completely color-correct working environment.
Service charges start at $100.00 an hour for individual artists and $150.00 an hour for corporate clients, in 1/2 increments. Free quotes & consultation.
Supporting services
Scanning film, help with color management issues, training, and more. Inquire about your specific needs and we’ll do our best to help.
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT WE CAN ONLY GUARANTEE PERFECTLY CLEAN SCANS FROM FILM THAT HAD BEEN FRESHLY PROCESSED AND PROPERLY HANDLED.
Scratches, fingerprints, mold, discoloration, water dry marks and other problems that arise from improper storage and handling can be fixed, but might incur extra costs.
We use the following film scanning equipment:
- basic Epson Perfection Pro scanner with a wet mounting kit. It’s excellent for scanning letter-sized and smaller documents, and can handle most film types too. Scans from 35mm and medium-format film are not going to impress anyone but still can be useful as thumbnails or in contact sheets. These can be batched so it’s a pretty effective platform for getting many small scans done on the cheap.
Scans from 8×10 film can be actually quite ok, and you can even get away with scanning 4×5 film on this machine, as long as you manage your quality expectations. This scanner also support automatic dust reduction functionality, also known as “ICE” from Applied Science Fiction / Kodak.
Epson scans are $12.50 ea, delivered cleaned up and color corrected. When we scan large batches of film (100+) we usually charge by hour rather than per scan. - Professional-grade dedicated 35mm film scanner from Nikon. An excellent, easy to use, and quick machine that can handle 35mm slides and 6-frame film strips. As all ccd-based scanners it will struggle with poorly exposed film, but the sharpness and color reproduction are pretty good. This scanner supports 4000dpi resolution natively and 8000dpi in an “oversampling” mode that actually works great; and an “ICE” function that takes care of dust relatively well. The only real drawback of this piece of gear is that it has very shallow depth of field – meaning that scanning film which is not very flat might end up with corners slightly softer than the center of the frame.
Nikon scans are $25.00 ea, delivered cleaned up and color corrected. - Imacon Flextight Precision scanner. A professional-grade machine capable of scanning all film types from 35mm to 4×5. It uses a 8000px sensor, so the maximum resolution of a scan depends on film format – from 6100dpi for 35mm to 2400dpi for 4×5. It’s very sharp, handles color negatives exceptionally well and its only drawback (as with all ccd-based scanners) is a limited ability to see through very dense positives.
Imacon scans are $50.00 ea., delivered cleaned up and color corrected. - Dainippon Screen AI 1015 drum scanner. A true dinosaur in 21 century, this O.G. piece of equipment is great for scanning any type of slide film as well as B&W negatives. It’s possible to scan color negs too, it’s just hard to get the color right in the scanner itself, so we recommend Imacon for scanning negatives – but outside of that, this machine can handle anything. We use Kami products from Aztek for wet mounting your film to avoid dust and newton rings, so it’s a laborious and expensive process – but we believe the results are worth it, if you require the very best.
Drum scans are $100.00 ea, delivered cleaned up and color corrected.
Analog printing and alternative/historical processing
We still maintain some traditional analog equipment for darkroom printing (B&W only, both silver- and platinum-based), and intaglio printing (Takach etching press, along with ability to make plates and screens) – so if there’s an interest in running a print project based on analog techniques, we are well positioned to answer that challenge. Call or write for details! Although we no longer offer chromagenic printing services (ie. large format digital photo imaging using machines such as Lambda, LightJet and Chromira) we still possess plenty of expertise preparing images for printing on these systems, so feel free to approach us for consultation on these matters.