Hey guys,
like you may know, I prefer my photos as physical items. So when I've got some money to spend, I like to order prints. In the past, I weren't too happy with some of the prints - direct printing on aluminium simply doesn't work too well, and "poster" quality prints, while cheap, are awful. So I tried two brand new products at one of the most well regarded photo laboratory around, Whitewall. What I received? Well, here are photos of the two prints I ordered.
First, a 10 x 15 cm print laminated on the back of a 25 mm thick block of acrylic glass. Sounds cheap? Well, it certainly doesn't look so. The €30 (plus shipping) yielded me a - for its size - incredibly massive thing to put on my desk. And trust me, it will stun everyone who first sees it - the effect really is that cool. And the quality of the print is outstanding too. Just the processing could be a little better - the edges aren't laminated perfectly. But they're good enough that nobody who doesn't inspect them as close as I did would even see it.
This is how it looks like on my desk. Unfortunately, you can't really see the cool 3D effect it has, especially not on the admittedly bad snapshots here.
You think there is nothing on this photo? Look again. That's what it looks like from the side. The glass itself is as clear as it gets.
Here, you can see a little better what it looks like from the side.
A photo, printed on Kodak Pro Endura paper with an 8 color laser printer, is laminated on the back. It looks like solid white from the first glance, but it actually transmits a bit of light through to make the photo on the front really shine when a light source, such as a window, is behind it.
Another one from the back.
The acrylic block is incredibly cool and is definitely something I would recommend anybody. I don't know if the processing always is as "bad" as it has been for my image, but even then, it's unbeatable for the effect it has on a viewer.
The second image is a 60 x 40 cm print on a solid 1 mm thick aluminum plate. It's polished and shiny as hell, but I actually like my prints shiny. The printing quality itself is far better than what you get on a "normal" direct print on aluminum composite panels due to the new technology which, according to the website, embeds the color in the metal. Shadow detail is not great, there's a little too much green in the darkest areas and the transition from the brighter part at the bottom and the darker one isn't perfect. But again, it's a very solid print, it's almost indestructible and I guess (or hope?) that detail reproduction is better in not quite as dark images. For about €95 (plus shipping) for this size, it's not cheap, but about comparable to making gallery prints with a combination of aluminum composite panel, photo paper and acrylic glass.
The sharply cut sides look very modern, and you no longer get the three separate sections of the usual aluminum composite panels.
I can only recommend the "HD Metal Print", as it's called by Whitewall, if you actually want a VERY shiny photo on your wall. I mean, its almost like a mirror when you look at it. But if that's what you like, as is the case with me, you probably won't be disappointed.
What do you think? And what kind of print you made was the one you liked best?
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