Canvas Digital Printing

November 18, 2011 :: Posted by - admin :: Category - Printing Design

Digital printing on canvas produces images with distinctive quality that are capable of visually binding the onlookers. With the advent of high-end printing technology, canvas printing is now as simple as taking your photograph in a digital camera.  Today most of the people look for a difference in their photographs – they wish for elegant prints that can attract onlookers or masterpieces to decorate their homes. Digital printing is a real breakthrough in printing technology and has created history in canvas prints and colour modeling. Canvas digital printing requires creativity as it’s a tricky job, where you need to be conscious about the limitations of the technology and the use of colour, print sizes and other factors. Canvas prints are highly effective and innovative tools for advertising a business and ensuring increased sales.  Digital prints can be made on canvases of different sizes, shapes and colours. Clever use of contemporary designs with outstanding colours and interesting captions can easily attract potential customers. Archival quality inks and UV artist’s grade canvas used for digital printing guarantee more endurance to the prints. The printed canvases can be stretched and framed so that they can be easily hung on the walls. Canvas prints are gaining popularity at a rapid rate. These are stunning due to their excellent color reproduction and clarity and are sure to make a lasting impression on the viewers. Canvas prints can be made from photographs, slides and negatives. Your old photos can also be well preserved as digital prints on canvas. You can also make digital prints of favourite paintings and artwork.Give a longer life to your cherished photos, paintings, and artwork with the help of digital prints on canvas. A digital print adds life to the photograph or painting, transforming them into excellent pieces of artwork.

Types of Digital Printing machines

November 11, 2011 :: Posted by - admin :: Category - Printing Design

Digital printing is a term that encompasses a lot of different equipment that produce different products and different levels of quality and expectations.

First let’s start with the term digital printing:
Digital printing’s definition is taking an electronic file and directly from that file creating your final output without going to plates or any other type of intermediary step or proof. It can be black or color.

The black is usually done by copiers on the low end and machines such as the Xerox Docutech or the Kodak Digimaster. These machines are capable of @ 100 copies a minute. Even these machines use toner although they are capable of higher resolutions than copiers. Although, higher quality than copiers the docutech & digimaster still don’t rival true offset quality of true offset presses.

The reasons these machines evolved and have become so popular is the ability to do low quantities at reasonable costs. They are limited as to the products and substrates that customers will use these machines for.The evolution of doing this same thing to color was a natural evolution. The higher the quality the better it could replace offset on the low end of the quantity spectrum.

Also as color digital printing machines improved customers deemed quality acceptable for more and more products and uses. Color copiers came first and use toner in the four base colors of CMYK to reproduce color photographs and images. The quality is on the low end for color and is susceptible to scratches and rubbing more than liquid ink. Then there is the classification of digital presses. There are toner and two types of liquid ink presses.

All of these color machines have strengths and weaknesses like any other kind of manufacturing process. Toner based machines are the IGen3 and the Nexpress. The quality is much better than color copiers but can still have toner look to them and sometimes don’t print smooth screenes. The only true offset entries are either Heidelberg or Ryobi machines. These actually produce temporary plates to produce the print job that is on press at that time.

This is true offset printing but has some limitations because the vast % of machines are small format and don’t have the ink carrying capacity that larger presses do. These machines also can’t print variable data printing where the image or text can be changed from sheet to sheet. The other liquid ink machine is the HP Indigo family. The Indigo 3050 can print variable data while rivaling offset quality.

The Indigo digital press family is the only machine that can print variable data as well as being capable of printing PMS spot colors as well. Customers will use this machine to print postcards, brochures, posters, sales sheets, flyers and any other printed product. These are your choices in digital printing. As final users have continued decreasing quantities of their orders and use more and more of customized marketing digital printing’s market share has increased. It is a powerful option to promote your business from small startups to large corporations.

Six common questions about sterling silver jewelry

November 03, 2011 :: Posted by - admin :: Category - Silver Jewelry

Sterling silver jewelry has been a popular commodity for thousands of years. One of the obvious reasons is the affordability over other precious metals gold and platinum. The large variety of sterling silver jewelry requires certain knowledge in order to choose the right piece and also keep it in good condition as long as possible. The followings are the most common questions concerning sterling silver jewelry.

How do I clean sterling silver jewelry?
It depends. Usually, it is sufficient to use a jewelry cloth (with two layers of cloths in different colors) that you can get from a jewelry accessory store. Don’t use any hard object to clean sterling silver jewelry; even paper towel could scratch the surface. You should rub any dirt off using a jewelry cloth, not fingernails. Silver-dip is another commonly used sterling silver jewelry cleaner, which can also be obtained from jewelry store. The entire silver jewelry is immerged in the solution for half a minute to a minute and then rinsed with water. Make sure the silver jewelry is not plated with any other metal before using the silver-dip or the plating will be damaged.

Where do I store sterling silver jewelry?
It is very important to store sterling silver jewelry properly when it is not used. The ideal place to store sterling silver jewelry is cool and away from sunlight. Heat and light will turn a silver jewelry yellow and cause it to tarnish quickly. Even indoor light source like florescent lights or light bulbs turn the color of silver jewelry over time. If you expect not to wear a certain piece for a long time, put it in a air-tight bag and store it in a drawer.

What types of silver jewelry plating are there?
Unlike gold and platinum, however, pure silver is rather unstable and oxides rather quickly. Therefore, silver jewelry is usually plated with another metal to protect it from tarnishing. There are two kinds of plating for silver jewelry: nickel and rhodium plating. Nickel plating has a more whitish look and rhodium plating has a darker look. Rhodium is used to plate white gold and platinum jewelry and is much more expensive than nickel, and it give better protection to the silver underneath. On the other hand, some silver jewelry is not plated. For instance, high polished sterling silver jewelry does not have any plating and the surface is polished by machine to render shininess. Also, “oxidized silver” jewelry is oxidized on purpose to give a dark antique look and is not plated with any other metals.

How do I know the purity of my silver jewelry?
The purity of sterling silver refers to 92.5% of silver in the alloy. In order to confirm the purity, the metal itself has to be sent to a laboratory to be tested. However, most of the sterling silver jewelry produced nowadays has a “925″ stamp to indicate the authenticity of the jewelry. Although there are cases where stamps are forged and the metal is either not silver or the purity is not as stated, they are very rare.

How about engraving and resizing?
Engraving and resizing of sterling silver rings is rather simple due to the ductility and relatively low melting point. However, make sure your jeweler understands the process of refinishing the ring and that they possess the necessary equipment to do so. Not all jewelers have the equipment to recoat the rhodium plating after cutting and welding the ring. Also, rings set with stones are sometimes not resizable because resizing might cause the stones to pop out. Such settings include channel and invisible settings.

Can I wear sterling silver jewelry if I am allergic to nickel?
Yes, just make sure the jewelry is pure sterling silver, not plated with nickel. Even Rhodium plated sterling silver jewelry sometimes contains a nickel layer between the silver and the rhodium to act as an adhesive. Hence, buy only high polished sterling silver jewelry if you are allergic to nickel.