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In the late ‘70s, Laszlo Regos escaped the iron grip of Soviet-enforced communism, and now runs a successful photography and wide-format inkjet printing business in the Detroit area.

In 1979, Hungarian Laszlo Regos “forgot to go home,” as he puts it. While visiting family in California, Regos decided to stay in America and pursue his creative dreams. Regos’s temporary amnesia would enrich both himself and his adopted country.

When Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary in 1956 to quell a popular uprising against Soviet domination and Hungary’s puppet government, those who didn’t escape the brutal intervention were stuck with the limited freedoms and opportunities of a state-run collectivist economy.

In Hungary, Regos was trained as a chemist. Though his true calling was photography, choices were limited behind the Iron Curtain, so he got as close as he could to photography by working the chemical side in one of Hungary’s largest photo labs.

“As a kid I started to do photography and fell in love with it immediately. The reason I became a chemist was because I wanted to be a photographer, and I stuck with that chemistry background until I came to America. Since that time, there has been a much better opportunity in America because you can do whatever you want to do,” says Regos.

Regos’s stateside trip, which is now its 29th year, allowed him to pursue photography and to build a successful business around his creative outlet. Early on, Regos took a job with a lab in Detroit. He started his own studio and full-service lab in 1985.

Creation and Production

The new business, based near Detroit in Berkley, Mich., would set the stage for the often symbiotic relationship that exists between Regos’s original commercial and stock photography and the printing sides of the business. Partitioned between Laszlo Regos Photography, which operates as the parent company, and Spectrum Photo, the two divisions have effectively balanced and contributed to each other for an effective whole.

Moreover, Regos’s photography background provided Spectrum Photo with a head start in providing quality color graphics to a demanding customer base. As with many photo labs, Spectrum Photo shifted its output processes from chemical to wide-format inkjet in the mid- to late-'90s. The difference, however, was in Spectrum Photo’s ability to call on Regos’s photographic expertise and customer contacts to help the company transition smoothly and successfully.

“A lot of Laszlo’s architectural photography involves office buildings and retail. Many of these designers and architects we work for want examples of their work for their portfolios and their office and lobby walls,” says Jim David, Spectrum Photo’s general manager. “We’ve been doing a lot more work in hospitals as they’ve discovered that photo murals can be soothing and therapeutic. As a result, many of our hospital projects are multi-panel overheads that patients can look at as they lie on the examining table. Plus, décor printing is less expensive than a piece of original fine art, and you can customize whatever they want however they want it.”

David adds that Spectrum Photo’s wide-format printing capabilities have allowed the company to easily fulfill these requests, providing the impetus for the décor and photo mural business that now represents the bulk of the Spectrum Photo’s printing.

Spectrum Photo’s décor work runs the gamut, from hospitals and hotels to corporate lobbies and boardrooms. Spectrum Photo has also decorated the Motown Historical Museum and other public spaces as word of the company’s capabilities continues to spread throughout the Detroit area and beyond.

Better than Good Enough

The company offers lab-type services, though its output is 100 percent digital inkjet. However, Spectrum Photo’s output services have shifted more in the direction of fine art as the company has forged relationships with local art colleges and built a significant reputation among the art and photo community for its quality printing.

Spectrum Photo runs two HP 5000s; one is 42 inches wide and runs dye inks for color-critical, photographic interior work, and the other is 60 inches wide with pigmented inks for outdoor work and un-laminated interior projects. The company recently acquired HP’s 24-inch wide Z3100, mainly to print Regos’s photography since the Z3100 is designed for color and black-and-white photo printing.

“Our experience with photography has made a big difference in generating repeat and word-of-mouth business, because there’s a lot that gets printed that’s just good enough. The customer often doesn’t know how much their image can be improved and what a difference that makes for their overall image and brand,” says David. “Beyond the basics of color management, there are ways to achieve quality by simply keeping in touch with the customer, and letting them know right away when you see a problem with a file, or if something doesn’t look right. It means sitting with the customer, putting the CD in the system, and making sure they know what to expect from the file they’re providing, and what we can and can’t do to improve it. We do everything we can do, because we know what can be done.”

For most of its photographic and fine-art work, Spectrum Photo relies on LexJet’s Sunset line of media, including Sunset Photo eSatin, Sunset Photo Gloss (which it also uses for proofing commercial photo applications, such as the Detroit 2009 calendar Regos photographed), Sunset Hot Press Rag, and Sunset Select Gloss Canvas.

“The fine-art aspect of the business has changed significantly in just the past few years as inkjet has basically replaced lithography as the printing technology of choice, especially for the lesser-known artists," says David. "With the great new inkjet materials from LexJet it’s also allowed for greater customization and value for the customer.”

For décor applications, David reports that LexJet’s 7 Mil High Performance Photo Gloss and Satin papers are a staple of the company’s interior and specialty project work, such as 3D project the company created for the Detroit Auto Auction. The piece featured Regos’s architectural photography of the major automobile manufacturers’ headquarters, printed, applied to Gatorfoam, and fit together to create lifelike scale models.