Choose subject Quality Care Mounting Files And Pictures Shipping Payment Send us your feedback If you want to give us feedback you can use the form here below. Topic Message How long the prints will resist to light and bleaching? The lightfastness depends on many parameters: Intensity of light, humidity, temperature, used media and ink. We use heavy-duty artist canvas with a traditional chalk/acrylic coating which is acidfree, very low sensitive against bleaching and chemicals. We use pigmented solvent ink commonly used for outdoor advertising which reaches deep into the canvas' surface by using high temperature. We put an additional UV-blocking varnish especially used to protect oilpaintings on canvas prints. This bundle of products and treatments improves the lightfastness to a possible maximum in digital canvas printing. In "normal" use at home environment with normal lights and conditions there may not occur any change in colour for 15-25 years or even longer. Then the colours may change within a acceptable and hardly visible range. But depending on the place the pictures hang (no direct sunlight) there may be no change at all within a long period of time. We also give a guarantee of 5 years on perfect colour stability for the use of the prints in a "museum"-environment with light-spots and extreme conditions. The digital printing industry's standard is 12 month colour-guarantee using pigmented solvent inks on recommended media. That had been one of the things we'd worked on right onfrom the beginning: To have a long range product with no concessions to durability! What means real canvas printing? Intended to the benefits of artist-canvas we combined pigmented and solvent based inks with a heavy duty canvas general used for oilpainting and we print directly with huge amounts of ink and heating up to 90°C at the origin acrylic, glue and chalk mixed coating of the canvas. So we reach a strong physical and chemical connection between the inks and the canvas' surface. Standard at the market is printing with waterbased inks on special coated canvases: That means another transparent acrylic overspray is added on the original coating (like the coating of the glossy photopaper you use at your desktop printer at home) and the print inks lay down only on and in this overspray. To match good colours only low ink amounts are needed.The result: less connection of the ink because of the mechanical sensitivity of the "soft" overspray and not acceptable lightstability because of the too low ink amount. The solvent in our inkformula and high heating "opens" the origin canvas coating to let the ink and the transport pigment parts deeply into the fabric's surface. That is real canvas printing. Is there special equipment used at BLAUSHOP®'s pressroom? Here at our pressroom use special updated and self improved printers which are not found anywhere else. It had been hardly possible to match those results with the printing-technology and machines to be found on the market. For our purpose we specially improved the technology on our printing-equipment, collaborated with the canvas producer to raise the quality of weaving, coating and manufacturing the murals to have an errorfree material and stand also in cooperation with the producer of the used inks. Knowhow and a perfect composition of materials are the main spirit. Now we obtain perfectly durable results with a technology of which even the press and printer engineers said that it was hardly possible! Also we are happy to act as a well expirienced partners of the digital printing suppliers and had the chance to test and judge products on their characteristics before they arelaunched to the market. It makes us really proud to see that we are ahead and do real canvas printings. How durable are those prints on canvas against scratching and other mechanical stresses? The prints are not very sensitive against mechanical stress. Only within the first 2 weeks you have to take great care especially of the frameworks borders and edges not to damage the canvas' surface. The inks take this time to harden and additional varnish completely. At blaukauz/BLAUSHOP®'s factory the "fresh" prints are treated in a special warm chamber to speed up the drying process. But at a state it just needs some more time and can't be processed faster. Normally our standard artist stuff is printed in advance. That means we store a stock of the popular motives and deliver them well dried. Only custom and short range jobs make it necessary to send a not entirely dried prints out to the customers. Notice: There is no treat to your health even when a print is not totally dry. We prevent any danger to your health with having the base drying at the factory. What kind of printing technique does BLAUSHOP® use? blaukauz/BLAUSHOP® uses a frequency modulated seave printing technology. Ink drops are shot on demand with pressure by a seave wearing print head on the media. It is alike your desktop printer at home but in huge dimensions and several aggregates to heat and steer the process. The main difference is that we use solvent based inks which are rather difficult in use on canvas but much more durable than water based inks. What is the difference between water based inks and the solvent based inks? Water based inks are smooth and easy in use to match bright and brillant colours. They stay on the surface of a media or sink into a special coating where lights are better reflected and show more brightness. Water based inks won't be connected chemically with the surface, it is only an adhesive process. Therefore the surfaces are sensitive. Solvent based inks solve the media's surface make the ink pigments and its glues enter the surface. The solvents dry after a short time and are ventilated off. There stays a surface physically and chemicallyl connected with the pigments for high durability. The printing result is more matte. It has the characteristic of airbrush paintings. Note: There are some new special waterbased inks on the market which are supposed to have a higher light stability. It is true that those inks are comparable to our solvent formula in light stability, but the required media for this ink is sensitive against bleaching. Be aware: If any samples of that "new" printing are shown to you they'll be 100% printed with no white zones to hide this bad issue. Depending on my desktop printer: Is the colour appearance identical to BLAUSHOP®'s? No, as you use dye based inks (without or low pigmented) at home you will match better pastells and transparencies than we are able to reproduce with our technology. That is a concession to durability and canvas used as the printing media. Also the shade of the white of the canvas is not similar to the one of a bleached and optical highlighted sheet of paper. So the white (unprinted) zones will not appear in similar brightness. As a matter of our technology a matte colour with very small reflections will be the result. Since the used ink colours do not mix and flow into one another like water based inks do and the resolution is only 360dpi, the gamut (variation of possible colours) is smaller. How excactly does BLAUSHOP® match my picture's/motive's colours? We do use professional colour management and calibrate our hardware every day. All profiling according to our pressroom is made inhouse and densities of the print heads are controlled each day. For nearly 100% colour accurancy it needs a defined workaround. You have to prepare your files properly, but depending on the different gamuth of RGB (what you see on your computer screen/active light) and CMYK (colours printed by different amounts of cyan, magenta, yellow and black/reflective light) there are not all colours reproduceable you see at your computer screen. For best control you should create CMYK-files from beginning on and proof them on a special proofing printer. For more details feel free to contact us. Will there be any changes in the print's surface within the next years? No, there won't be a visible change. If you wipe off the dust from the canvas-print with a bit of water the print's surface won't change the way it looks. Now as we varnish all our canvas prints cleaning won't change its appearance. What is the advantage of canvas? Canvas has a precious appearance, it is durable and the best choice for stretching on a blaukauz®-framework. Prints on it look as unique as airbrush and not like photos or illustrations on plastic. Is there any threat to health printing with solvent inks? Not for the customer. Until the print is shipped all danger to your health is eliminated. In our pressroom we perform a lot of air exhausting and washing directly on the printing machines to protect our health. Then the prints are stored and dried in a special warm chamber. When you unpack the prints you may smell the parts of the resin varnish which is added to the print to improve the lightfastness. May there occur any disturbances in solid colour-zones on the print? In the canvas there are some natural differences at the surface which may occur more visible in solid colour zones. We check the material with special light right before printing, each print while printing and when manufacturing to the framework and we will reprint it if it does not correspond with our high quality standard. In a very few cases there may occur a hardly visible banding made from the printing head's movement or the coating process of our canvas supplier. Which resolution is used in BLAUSHOP®'s pressroom? BLAUSHOP® prints 360dpi (dot per inch). What can I do if the print is damaged by wrong handling? BLAUSHOP® always aims to keep its customers satisfied: Therefore contact us please and explain what happened to the print and how. Than we will decide if the blaukauz®-framework could be refreshed with a reprint by sending the framework back to us for a small charge. Is the print glossy or matte? The print is matte because the canvas is matte. Even though we put ink all over the surface it will stay matte. What about very dark colours, like black? We print on textiles and canvas. We print also with double strike technology; that means every print pass is shot twice on the media and to increase the amount of ink to a maximum. But the surface of canvas/textiles suck the ink, what is a real benefit for the perfect lightfastness but a disadvantage if you want to have solid "closed" colours. Especially dark colours can't be printed as deeply as on coated papers. Are there any limitations in the print's size? In general not. Only the media limits the size: Canvas up to 320cm/short size, textile up to 500cm/short side. If it is no problem to you to have seams within the print even greater formats are realizable. We also offer connections with zippers etc. How solid is the framework against any change in humidity and frequently change of room temperature? The wood used for the framework is technically dried and two or more layers are glued together to prevent problems with straightness as much as possible. Unfortunately blaukauz® can't guarantee 100% straightness because wood is a natural material and may differ from piece to piece. Is it possible to hang such a framework on slanting walls, too? Yes, when you mount the framework with the alloy-clamp coming in the package you may mount it even on slant walls up to 45°. But be conscientious to fix the clamp properly to the wall. What are the main features of the so called blaukauz®-framework? It stays straight even when the temperature or humidity changes; easy restretching with the patented one-screw-solution; convenience in mounting and care; completely "hidden" behind the motive. How does it differ from ordinary stretcher bars? The principle is almost the same but the high-quality of all its parts make the patented blaukauz®-framework unique. Are there any limits in size for blaukauz®-frameworks? Yes, beside the normal one-piece-bars we also produce special bars with stronger profiles which can be sticked together to reach lenghts up to 10 Meters. We had no chance to proove bigger formats until now. How does BLAUSHOP® help me if the framework breaks? Does blaukauz give any guarantee on that item? If the blaukauz®-framework brakes please contact us. If there is no external cause for the damage send it back to us and we will rebuilt it with no costs for you.