This article is for collectors wanting to print or order prints of artworks they own, and for artists wanting to print and maybe even sell their work. We're going to cover; framing (briefly), print size, paper types and finding a print shop to print for you.

Watch the whole video below.

FRAMING (briefly)

I'm not going to go too deeply into framing other than to say the frame can often cost more than the print, which takes people by surprise sometimes, buy a print for fifty dollars and spend a hundred on framing it. But also, I believe you should be thinking about the frame before even considering ordering a print.

I'll explain... When people think about getting a print made they often don't know what size to get, and think that bigger is better. They start with the print, then the frame and finally where to put it. A kind of inside out approach.

I strongly suggest to other way around, decide where it's going, think about the type of frames you'd like, thin edges vs wide edges, then the matte size, around one inch is good for smaller prints, two inches for larger ones, and then how much of a border you think you'll want around the artwork. Once you subtract the width of both sides of the frame, the matte and the border from the space you want to fill, you'll be left with the size of the print.

For me, I want the print to fill as 34 inch wide space, I'm going to use a 1/2 inch frame, with a 2 inch matte, and a narrow 1/2 border all the way around.

So once I subtract the 1/2 inch frame, 2 inch matte and 1/2 border from each side, I'm left with 24 - 1 - 4 - 1 = 28 inches, which will therefor be the size of my print.

The other thing you may want to do is buy an off the shelf frame, then get the artwork printed to the size that fits it. And if you do get an off the shelf frame, try and get one with glass rather than plastic if you can.

If you're going to the framers then generally just trust them, they've done it loads of times before.

Now you know roughly what size you want to print something at, you have to find out if you can...

PRINT SIZES

The general rule for maximum print quality is you're aiming for 300dpi, which stands for dots per inch, and for our purposes that's the same as saying 300 pixels per inch. Which is roughly 120 pixels per centimetre (we're going to switch back and forth quite a lot between inches and centimetres).

In the case of my 28inch 70 Pop print from before, that'd be 28 inches x 300 dpi which means I'd need a 8,400 by 8,400 pixel source image.

A one meter print would be 100 centimetres at 120 pixels per cm, which is 12,000 pixels. Some of those numbers are pretty high.

From a technical side, with our type of generative art which is generated on a <canvas> object on a web page, they generally max out at 8,192-ish pixels along an edge. Larger than that and sometimes the browser will fail to display the art. So not enough for a one meter print at 300 dpi.

You can push it and get away with 200 pixels per inch, around 80 per centimetre. The large print shown below has been printed at 200 dpi and it's fine. And I think you can get away with it more on the textured paper, because the soak of the ink and the texture hides the start of pixilation. If you're feeling really brave you could possible go down to 150 pixels per inch, but I'd avoid it if you can.

To recap, you want between 200 and 300 pixels per inch, if you know the size you want, like 18 inches, multiply by two or three hundred to get the pixels you need. If you have the image, divide the number of pixels across or down by two or three hundred to get the sizes you can print it at.

So, if you're thinking about buying a piece of digital art with printing in mind, it's worth checking out if it generates a high-resolution image, or if the artist supplies one. Some artworks give you the option to download a high resolution png directly from the work, but if not you can try this one handy trick...

Open up the artwork you own and want to print in it's own window. Then zoom out as far as you can, most artworks will attempt to resize to fill the space, which because you zoomed out is theoretically much larger. Not all artworks will resize automatically, for some you may need to reload the page.

Other artworks have been hardcoded to a fixed maximum size so this trick won't work on those.

Maximise the window as much as possible, I end up going full-screen on a 4k monitor, and that should give you an output that's suitable for printing. Again this doesn't work in all cases.

In the above example, 8,640 pixels at 300 is around 29 inches in height, or 72cm. At 100cm high, you'd be printing at 86.40 pixels per cm (8,640 pixels / 100 cm), which is just above our minimum 80 pixels per cm.

So if you're looking to buy work to print, it's always worth checking the description before hand to see what your download options are, and trying this trick.

First thing is you want to pick paper and printing method that suits your design. First we have the most common printing technology, the ink jet... which we'll also call Giclée printing. Some people don't like that word, they don't think it's a real thing, and would rather call it archival printing, or archival art printing, it doesn't really matter. It basically means were aiming to use light-fast, fade-resistant archival ink on acid-free paper in a fancy printer. Those prints should survive 80 to 100 years without fading, some up-to200. It'll certainly outlast you or me, what a nice thought!

If you're going the ink-jet route your choice after that is basically rough or smooth paper. It can be a little overwhelming thinking you need to pick the "right" paper, and I'll suggest my favourite in a bit, so here's a couple of things that may help...

First, you want paper that's over 280gsm, don't worry about that, good paper and printers will tell you what the gsm is, and you want over 280, that's the rule!

Second, very, very VERY broadly there are two styles of generative art. The first leans into using print like textures, often simulating noise and paper textures. That's partly because on smooth bright screens, our brain is surprised and delighted by this roughness in the image, so those types of artwork tend to do well. But printing a simulated paper texture on top of actual paper texture can be a little weird and look wrong (sometimes). So if there's a lot of texture in the image, I would tend towards smoother paper.

The opposite is true, the other style of GenArt leans into the digital, why try emulating traditional print when you can play to the strengths of the digital medium, doing things paper and paint can't? In that case printing onto a heavily textured paper gives our brains that surprise and delight, we aren't used to seeing solid, strong colours and gradients on traditional textured paper.

So...

• Textured designs -> smooth paper (so they don't fight)
• Smooth designs -> textured paper.

What do I use or recommend? Well.

Highly textured paper looks amazing, this is stuff like Ilford Cotton Textured, or Hahnemühle German Etching paper...

...however...

Those prints are really easy to damage and mark, you have to be super careful with them. If you're getting it framed don't even open the packing tube to look at it, take it straight to the framers and get them to deal with it. Ask them to check for any faults.

With those papers and other cotton based paper they sometimes get loose fibers on the surface that get printed on and then when they drop off it leaves white behind, I'll show you on this print [large-purple-print], it's very small but once you notice it you can't unsee it, I had to ask them to reprint this one.

So if there are large solid areas of colour, maybe steer away from the really textured paper, if your artwork is more like a painting (midjourney ai type stuff) then you probably won't notice a white speck in the middle of everything.

I use and favour Hahnemühle Photorag, you still have to be careful, obviously, but it still has a good texture and I haven't received a bad print yet.

For smooth paper, with the tiniest hint of a texture then I use Hahnemühle Pearl. Which is great for textured images and also bold digital designs, it's every-so slightly shiny, rather than matt, but not too much, the only downside is you can't sign it in pencil, you'll need to find a pen that works for you.

You know the size, you have the file, you've got an idea for the type of paper you want to use, now you have to find somewhere to print it for you.

PRINT STUDIO

This is my suggestion, try to find somewhere local you can walk or easily drive to. That's not an option for a lot of people, so try to find somewhere in the same state, county, regional area, if that fails the same country, and if all that fails I'll tell you my printer after this who ship globally as a last resort.

These may sound stupid but these are the questions you probably want to be asking.

One: Ask if they do archival giclée prints

Two: Ask if they have any of these papers...

• Canson Aquarelle Rag
• Ilford Cotton Textured
• Hahnemühle Photorag
• Hahnemühle German Etching

Three: Ask how many ink cartridges their printer uses, you're looking for seven plus, ideally ten or eleven. We don't want just cyan, yellow magenta and black, we want the other colours in-between too. And if they roll their eyes at you, just tell them you were told to ask the questions.

If the answer is yes to all three of those then you've found yourself a printing service! It's also worth seeing or asking if they have a sample pack of prints & paper you can buy, often they'll do and that'll make things even easier for you.

If you're really stuck, then you can use the print studio I use, I'm in the UK where they have printers, but because of stupid Brexit they've also set up a studio in Germany where they can ship to Europe & world-wide, as well as in the US, so everywhere. They're called ThePrintSpace, and that works with dot co dot uk and dot com for free US shipping, I think.

• https://www.theprintspace.co.uk
• https://www.theprintspace.com

This isn't sponsored or affiliated, but I think you can use my code to get a discount on your first order: 91ED3ZO

The printer they use is a Epson Sure Color P9000 printer with Epson UltraChrome HDX Wide Gamut Inks. A "professional" "home" (i.e. expensive) printer would be the Epson P900 or the Canon P1000.

Colour settings. This is really quick, there's all sorts of things about colour profiles, downloading the correct profile for the printer and so on. I'm sure that's all great, and probably important for portraits to get good skin tones. For generative art I've never bothered, it's always looked fine.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

I've talked a lot about high quality printing, but the most important thing to me, is to surround yourself with art that makes you happy or challenges you. You don't need a frame, you don't need archival ink and paper, just print it out on whatever printer you can get your hands on and stick it up on the wall. Buy a cheap frame if you want to.

Generative art is great when it's on your screen, you phone, watch, screen-saver, lock screen, digital screen up on the wall, VR even. But it hits differently when it's physically there, when you sit down and it's just there, when you walk past it each day. You start to see new things in it. This is why I often advice artists to print out their own work and let it sit with them a while, slow down, let it develop. And you can do that with cheap prints up on the wall, change them around and so on.

Everything before is because those are the questions I get asked most often, what paper, what size and so on, but I don't want anyone to think that's too much, they can't do it. A sheet of paper stuck up on the wall that lets you connect to the art is just as important and just as valid.

I hoped this has helped you, [like and subscribe all that stuff], but more helpful to me perhaps is if you see someone asking about how to print their artwork, and if this was useful to you, then point them to this article/video, and that would be great!

WHERE TO FIND ME

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PRINTS

Some of the test prints shown in this video are for sale in the shop: https://shop.revdancatt.com/collections/hexagones-landscape they are each unique "out-of-band" prints and are marked with A/P for "Artist's Proof" as they were made specifically for this video to test the paper.