Outré® Giclée Entré

Outré® has made their entré at Vashon Island Imaging. We tried their ACM222410 polyester canvas for a job brought in by artist illustrator Carol McCloud (http://www.galacticalchemy.com). She is interested in the Zen of the Mayan calendar and makes illustrations whose themes derive from that ancient culture. She came to us to make canvas giclées for display at a Prophets Conference in Vancouver, BC... and she brought her own canvas.


Although Carol thought she was doing everyone a favor, I was dubious about using an unknown media especially one with a French name (France gets a lot of bad press in the States). She said that a friend had sent it to her, which didn't make me any more confident. I explained how giclée prints needed a special kind of canvas, one with a ground to accept the ink, and while opening the package started carrying on about color management and all that. However when I pulled out the canvas roll it was obvious that it was prepared for giclée printing. I thought to myself, 'giclée and Outré are both French words... maybe that is a good thing'.

If you are a professional giclée printer as I am you know that it usually takes some time and trouble to get things right with any new media, despite the current state of color management. We use Epson technology and like to stay in their range of media wherever possible in order to get the most out of our machinery. Like using 'genuine Ford parts' in your Ford. But we are known as a custom shop so we took on Carol's job ...and her Outré canvas made its entré for a giclée at Vashon Island Imaging.

Clients come to Vashon Island Imaging because our prepress work insures the highest quality printed output. We do our 'due diligence' and put in the time to get things right. I've even written a book on the subject called Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée (ISBN 9780-9865-75112, 272 pages, 477 pictures). So I made a quick Internet check and quickly found Outré ACM222410 canvas at www.myoutre.com in their Aqueous Inkjet Signage category. How unglamorous of them I thought. Inkjet signage doesn't sound very artistic even if it is aqueous. Anyway... there I found the specifications which are as follows:

Outré 22 Mil Poly-Cotton Water Resistant Matte Canvas is a bright white water resistant canvas composed of a 65/35 polyester/cotton base giving it a uniform non-glare surface. The basis weight range is 430-470 Grams/m2; caliper range is 20.7 to 22.3(mil); opacity is 96-97%; gloss (@60°) is 2; and fabric weave is Oxford 2 over 1. All that code language means that it's a lot like Epson's Premium Matte Canvas except more white and bright... like a canvas version of Epson Enhanced Matte paper. I love the whiteness of Enhanced Matte so the new Outré canvas looked good to my eye.


After getting Carol's job set-up in PhotoShop® I turned to the Internet and downloaded the profiles offered for our printer at the Outré site. Eagerly, I installed the profiles and printed a test strip. Whoa... there were some missing colors (see #2 below)! Back at the Outré site I double checked the profile... hmmmmm.


As a cross check I decided to try some Epson profiles. A good trick I learned from Devan Burnett at Tricera Imaging in Vancouver BC is to switch profiles to get better results. In other words, the recommended profiles might not do as good a job as the profile for another media. What is 'good' or 'better' is up to you and your printer. For example, we use the profile for Epson Velvet Fine Arts Paper when printing on Premier Canvas Matte and Premier Canvas Satin and get stronger color. It made sense that the VFAP profile might work on this remarkably similar product. Presto! Worked like a charm (see #3 above). No missing colors and a superb look... the extra brightness of the canvas made the colors really pop.

For comparison I tried using the Epson default canvas profile with the Outré canvas and that looked as bad as the Outré profile but more cyan in the blues compared to the heavy magenta delivered by the Outré profile (see #1, above).

Finally I ran a print on Epson Premium Canvas Matte with the VFAP profile. As would be expected, the coloration was identical to the Outré canvas version, but darker and less contrasty by virtue of the lower visual white point (see #4 above).

To be fair, the Epson canvas version looks a bit 'dull' compared to the Outré canvas rendition. That doesn't mean that Outré is perfect for all images but for those who like zokko color, Outré could be a welcome entré for a new look in giclée. Eh?