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The digital fine art (DFA) market continues to grow, driven by the creative inspiration of end users and enabled by the continuous development of new printing systems, inks, media products, and the Internet. InfoTrends has conducted research studies on the production of fine art using digital printers and continues to monitor the growth of the market. InfoTrends projects the retail value of the digital fine art market to grow from approximately $550 million in 2006 to more than $960 million in 2010.
There is a huge crossover in the DFA space between artists, photographers, and print service providers. Last year we saw a variety of new products on the media side from companies like Crane, Hahnemuhle, Hawk Mountain, and InteliCoat, each of which continues to populate their fine art printing portfolios with more products and in more size options to make it easier, and in some cases possible, to print pieces of fine art that were unachievable in the past. One of the biggest trends we see is more and more cut sheet media hitting the market that takes advantage of the new low-end printers that have hit the market in the last 12 months.
On the hardware side, PMA really seemed to turn up the heat on the DFA market when Canon, which had really not been a strong player in the market, jumped back into it with its imagePROGRAF 5000 12-color printer. The IPF5000 has automatic features like glossy and matte black swapping that take the sting out of ink swapping. This is kind of a hot button issue in the market because changing inks uses up so much ink that a changeover reportedly costs users as much as $10.
Additionally, HP has launched its new Z-series 24- and 44-inch wide-printers and Epson has introduced its Stylus Pro 3800. Both the new HP and Epson models include advanced capabilities and low prices.
Get with the Program
One of the elements of DFA printing that we don't see very much in other wide-format print applications is the sense of community. There are lots of very good websites, blogs, and user groups that serve the fine art printing market by putting aspiring photographers and digital artists together with experienced users. If you haven't visited them already here are a few of my favorites: www.dpandi.com, www.worldprintmakers.com, www.gicleeprint.net, www.greatgiclee.com, and www.wide-formatimaging.com, of course. These sites provide all kinds of assistance for people interested in growing their digital fine art printing business including tips and tricks using specific pieces of equipment, how-to's for marketing your print-making services, and directories so buyers can find artists and print makers in their area.
The fast establishment of websites where end users can find and buy digitally printed art is also one of the biggest trends we have seen in the DFA industry. It is a natural because it is fairly quick and inexpensive to populate a site displaying art and there are readily available services that will handle e-commerce so that artists can concentrate more on the creation of fine art content.
Some of the leading printer and supplies vendors are participating in building these fine art producing virtual communities by offering on-line community sites and programs that both connect end users and offer a "certification" of the fine art prints produced by its members. Canon, Epson, HP, Legion Paper, and others have rounded up pro photographers and highly visible DFA print makers in their programs to establish a standard of excellence in DFA printing.
Last year I got to visit one of the more interesting companies in the digital art printing market called The Art Group. Working with museums and entertainment companies (like Disney), The Art Group has very successfully built on on-demand fine art printing business. Basically the company sets up a kiosk at the museum when a certain type of art is being displayed. People who go to the museum to see that kind of art can order high-end framed prints of these works of art right at the kiosk.
These are not poster prints, they are digital prints printed on wide-format digital inkjet printers and custom framed according to the customer preferences.
I have been contacted several times by photographers, artists, and print service providers asking me to recommend flatbed printers capable of producing fine art prints because they wanted to print on unique rigid substrates, including sheets of glass and aluminum. The challenge these substrates represent is significant, because among other things, the inks have to be opaque enough to maintain the intended color on a substrate that has a unique color of its own, not white. Also, for several of these potential end users, the output of the fine art print is not the finished product. Once the print is complete, it is then displayed with very specific lighting and shadowing effects that are just as important to these artists as what is on the substrate.
Digital fine art printing can be a good news/bad news proposition for print service providers. The bad news is that these users are extraordinarily demanding of the quality of the final output, the good news for print service providers is that because the art project is a project, not a job, there is an opportunity to charge for the additional products and services that artists demand.
What is really exciting about digital fine art is that it is not just about the selling price of the printed output, although that certainly is exciting from the print providers' standpoint. What is really exciting is that the possibilities that the advanced capabilities, low-prices, and better communication vehicles exist that will continue to make digital fine art printing an application area that creates opportunities for artists and print providers alike.
Tim Greene is the director of Wide Format for InfoTrends. For more information, please visit www.infotrends.com.
author: BY TIM GREENE