Opening

A few days ago I attended the opening of another portion of the outpatient facility belonging to the health system where I work.  This phase was even larger than the first and I was honored to again have the system purchase my artwork to decorate the facility.  From an artist's standpoint, I don't think there is anything quite like walking into a building and seeing 79 of your prints on the wall that you yourself have printed after hours and hours of work to ensure that they communicate your vision.

Particularly alluring were the four images that were blown up to almost 6 feet and printed (these I did not print myself) by a specialty company on some type of polished aluminum.  This was arranged by the hospital's art consultants and therefore I don't really know the details of the process.  Interestingly, the company that produced these only wanted the files at 100 pixels/inch, not the usual 240-360 that I typically print on paper with.  Nonetheless, given the dimensions, it still required some significant 'uprezzing' of the image files, which I did using OnOne's Perfect Resize.  It was with a bit of trepidation that I went to look at these, because there was no specific color profile supplied for softproofing, no clear directions as to how the files should be sharpened and, of course, no proof print to see if the sharpness would hold up on the aluminum at that size and resolution.

Well, I am usually a pretty strong critic of my own work, but I have to say that the aluminum prints really looked great and I was quite pleased with them.

The image below is not one that was printed on aluminum, but is one of the prints that hang in the facility that I don't recall having posted on my blog before.

Gerbera

Copyright Howard Grill