Expand Vol. 4 No. 4

Will Print for Food

Selling burgers and tapping untapped markets at the point of sale with original art printed on dreamScape Wallcoverings is just one example of Lone Eagle Digital Imaging’s skyrocketing success.

Lone Eagle Digital Imaging in Yakima, Wash., brought its background and expertise in fine-art printing and color management to a new family restaurant north of Seattle.

Teddy’s Bigger Burgers, a family-owned franchise with locations in Hawaii and Washington, commissioned Seattle artist Ann Fiser to create a distinct image for the restaurant in Woodinville, Wash.

The trick was translating Fiser’s 4 ft. x 12 ft. original art, depicting the owners’ family and celebrities like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean gallivanting through the Seattle metro area enjoying Teddy’s Bigger Burgers.

Enter the owner of Lone Eagle Digital Imaging, Rick Sader, who was able to take this challenging project and bring the distinctive mural to life on dreamScape 20 oz. Matte from LexJet with his Roland 545ex six-color low-solvent printer/cutter.

The final mural, installed by Steve Orban of Cherry Wall Covering, Tacoma, Wash., was about twice the size of Fiser’s artwork, 8 ft. x 25 ft. The mural was printed in seven overlapping strips with about two inches of overlap between each strip.

The mural was protected with dreamGUARD Protex3 from LexJet, which Sader applied with a small paint roller. Sader says the liquid laminate gives the print a nice matte finish that protects the image and reduces glare from the restaurant’s lights and windows.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was getting from analog to digital, while maintaining the clarity and color of the original. Alex Rubin of Rubin Photography shot the mural using a high-end dSLR and large soft boxes for even lighting. He took five overlapping photos of the piece, which were then stitched together in Photoshop. The huge TIF file (almost 2 GB) was then sent to Sader for output.

“Knowing in advance the color management side of printing, and having worked with photographers and fine artists helped a lot because I was able to tell the photographer what he needed to do to prepare it for printing. For example, I asked him to set up his camera in RGB as opposed to sRGB mode and calibrate the gray balance of the lighting so that by the time I got his files they were ready to go,” explains Sader.  “I also had a custom ICC profile ready for the media, and when the artist saw the prints going on the wall, she said they matched the original almost perfectly. If you try to correct for color, light balance, and other variables after the fact, it will take a lot more time, and you might not get it where you need it to be. I’ve got a high-end spectrophotometer that makes great ICC profiles. It allows me to make the prints only one time, rather than cycling back through printing and tweaking. The point is that you need to spend the money on a good color management system and take the time to do it right. If you try to do it on the cheap, your results will show that.”

Beyond the color management challenge, and perhaps even more challenging, was the tight deadline and the fact that there was quite literally little margin for error. This required Sader to be extra diligent in working the file for the installer and making sure the overlaps and the margins worked out perfectly.

“I asked the artist to leave plenty of margins around the edges, so that when I printed it there would be some margin to trim away as extra bleed for the installation. Though I printed it slightly over-sized to provide some extra margin, it still didn’t give the installer much wiggle room. He had about a half inch margin on the left and right sides and the bottom, and no margin on the top. In the future we’ll make sure the artist paints the original with more margin on the prints for the installer,” says Sader.

The file was RIPped with ONYX ProductionHouse at a 720 x 720 dpi print resolution on the Roland at 40 degrees C in eight-pass mode. Given the size of the file, Sader says the file took ten hours to RIP, despite the horsepower of ONYX and his computer setup.

Networking Education

Thanks in part to the success of this project (the owners and the restaurant’s patrons all love the mural), Sader has other mural projects in progress, including one for the Yakima Valley Museum. Over the years, Lone Eagle Digital has evolved from a fine-art reproduction company to a commercial print shop, and Sader’s skills in this area have yielded a potpourri of applications, from vehicle wraps to courtroom graphics.

“Going from fine art, a more difficult application, to something that’s not as demanding, you develop high-end skills that allow you to get great results quickly. You understand resolution, scanning, color management, print modes, ICC profiles, and so forth. It has most definitely helped set my business apart. If I can reproduce someone’s water color painting, then for sure I can reproduce something on a vinyl banner,” says Sader.

Another key to Sader’s success has been education. He says that a lot of people still don’t understand all the capabilities or the range of applications and advertising that can be accomplished with wide-format digital printing.

“I see wall murals as something that can turn a small business, whether it’s a coffee shop or a hair salon, into something really fabulous. There is a fair amount of education that has to go into it, however. They might have not have any idea that something like this can happen. When I drive around in my vehicle wrap people will yell over, ‘Hey! Nice paint job!’ I think wall murals fall into that same category,” says Sader. “With all the cool textures available, there are all kinds of possibilities. I’m trying to work with interior designers and I’m typically giving them some kind of introductory offer, like half off their first wall mural, just to get the ball rolling. Once they know about it, they can add it to their bag of tricks so when they’re working with their customer they think of Lone Eagle Digital Imaging.”

Sader adds that print samples and giving customers a tour of the showroom showcasing all or most of the possibilities is of utmost importance. “You can’t just describe something to someone. You can talk for hours on end, but it doesn’t do any good,” he says. “You have to visit them and show it to them in person, so they can see the colors and the texture. I also make them an offer they can’t refuse for the first time they purchase. If they have some awareness of what’s possible, then at least they’re more aware of what you can do. The other thing that’s needed to sell digital is somehow getting across to them that it doesn’t have to look like computer art. There are still plenty of people out there who have an aversion to digital printing, so you have to get across to them that they can print just about anything, whether it’s photography, art, logos, or any other graphic, and it will look great.”

Moreover, Sader is actively involved in the local business and arts communities. The artist who painted the mural for Teddy’s Bigger Burgers had just met Sader through Biznik.com, a local networking site that’s a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn. When she got the call from Teddy’s she immediately thought of Sader, whom she had met only days before being commissioned for the artwork.

“Through Biznik I was able to search through the members and find people I wanted to partner with, and that’s how I found the wall muralist. We met at lunch and I showed her samples of all the different textures, and when she got her next project she wanted to do it digitally, so she gave me a call,” says Sader.