Creating Stunning Presentations with FAE

I want my presentations to look like they were pulled from the pages of a design magazine.

Placing a Live View Target

The fastest way to present an artwork from the FAE website is to place the FAE Live View target on the wall where an artwork is desired, select the artwork to be presented from ArtTracker (FAE’s favorites list),  and then use the FAE  Mobile App to show your client, using augmented reality, how the artwork fits the space.  The App will allow you to capture the View, upload it and assign it to a Project in My Views and/or email it to another party.

Although the Mobile App is the quickest way to show an artwork in your client’s space, if they prefer to see presentations that look like they were torn from a design magazine, it is much better to use FAE’s Desktop App.

A View like this can be emailed or copied and pasted into presentations
Rooms Target

To create a View with the desktop app, you will need to place a Rooms target on the wall where an artwork is needed as you did with the Live View Target described above.  Then, following FAE’s suggestions “For Best Results,” located on the second page of the Rooms target printout, photograph the room from multiple angles so the Rooms target is visible in each image.  The images can be uploaded to FAE through the Mobile App or from the file up-loader in My Rooms, depending on what device was used to capture the images.

Once the Images are uploaded to My Rooms and you have added the artworks you want to see into your ArtTracker, you can now easily create a magazine quality presentation View to show how the artwork will look in the room.

View creation is discussed in detail in the blog post Anatomy of a View and there is also a three minute video available that introduces the basics of process.  To make the View presentation as elegant as possible FAE provides a thoughtful selection of tools that make the View edit process creative and fun.  The FAE View creation tool box allows you to:

  • Place a rudimentary frame around the artwork image and select its color from the FAE color palette.
  • Balance the lighting between the artwork that was photographed under controlled lighting and the Room that most likely wasn’t.
  • Drag and drop the artwork image to a different location on the wall and then drag and drop the artwork’s corners to adjust its perspective to suit its new location.  Keep in mind that the proportional height and width of the artwork is only correct when it is centered over the target’s original placement in the Room photo.
  • Name and assign the View you are creating to a Project.

After each View is created, it appears in My Views:

Newly Created View
The My Views Page, with the “+ Create New View… ” button at upper right. Your newest View is always first in line

The View can then be emailed, printed out, or cut and pasted into a power Point Presentation.  All the Views can be filtered by Project and reviewed by clicking on the stack icon under one of the View thumbnails.

A PowerPoint can be saved as a PDF if it is to be emailed or shown on a phone, tablet or desktop to your client, or it can be saved as a PowerPoint file so it can be displayed for a group presentation.  Below is an example of a Power Point presentation showing several layout examples.

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To see all available FAE Design Blog Posts,  jump to the Design Blog Table of Contents.

To see all available FAE Collector Blog Posts, jump to the Collector Blog Table of Contents.

Sign up with FAE to receive our newsletter, and never miss a new blog post or update! 

Browse fine artworks available to purchase on FAE.  Follow us on FacebookInstagram, or Twitter to stay updated about FAE and new blog posts.

For comments about this blog or suggestions for a future post, contact Kevin at [email protected].

Other FAE informational posts you may find helpful:
Fine Art Insurance 101Broken sculpture

 

An image of a painting carefully placed in the back seat of a carPractical Tips for Safely Transporting Artwork
An image of artworks carefully placed on on a bedTemporarily Storing Artwork: A Case Study
an image of a wall of shelves holding print boxesFour Artwork Storage Solutions
Hanging and Framing FAQ’s
outdoor image of a line of figure sculptures with arms raisedSiting Sculpture, Part One: Overview

 

facade of a modern house with a round sculpture sited in the front yardSiting Sculpture: Part Two, A Case Study
image of a wall of frame samplesThe Importance of a Proper Frame

 

an image of a graphic showing the entire spectrum of viable and non-visible lightWhen to Use UV Control Glazing
Two images showing an image of a flower behind reflective and reflection free glassReflection on the Problem of Reflections

 

The Value in Fine and Reproductive Prints

It is fairly easy to differentiate between how a fine print, a limited edition print, and a giclée print are produced.  What is difficult, in today’s art world, is to make a call as to which should be more valued and why.

So, instead of making outright pronouncements, I will suggest some, as was explained in the Pirates of the Caribbean, “guidelines” to use in thinking about issues of intrinsic value as they relate.

Fine Print

In the creation of a Fine Print, depending on the medium, an artist works on a metal plate, stone, woodblock, cuts a stencil or alters some other material to create a matrix (design).  When ink or other pigmented material is applied in, onto, or through the matrix and then the image is mechanically transferred to a piece of, in most cases paper, a fine print is produced.   In a fine print, the paper with the transferred image is the artwork, not an exacting copy or reproduction of something else.  I certainly include photography as a fine print medium as it is historically produced through a captured matrix and manipulated to the artist’s specifications through the printing process.

The classic categories of print processes used to create fine prints are:

Intaglio Printing Press

Historically, these were the processes by which artists were able to provide original works of art in a more democratic and less expensive manner to a larger audience than with paintings or drawings.  Because each matrix is inked and mechanically printed by hand, one at a time, each print is unique.  The artist may decide to produce one unique proof from the matrix or as many prints as the matrix allows.  Fine Prints have always been of interest to collectors. If an artist becomes better known over time and their art appreciates because of collector interest, chances are their fine prints will follow suit.

Limited Edition Prints

From the 1960’s and well into the 1990’s artists discovered that they could produce a painting, watercolor, or drawing, and have it reproduced by an offset four-color printing press in large numbers to whatever size the press was capable of.   Most of the editions created this way were large because of the initial set up costs but the price per print came down with every print produced.   Editions were sometimes as low as 500 but most were between 1000 and 2000.  An edition of 2000 would cost the artist around $2.00 a print.  If they wholesaled a print at $10.00 to $20.00 dollars to a frame shop and the frame shop sold it to a client for between $40 and $100 and frame it for $150, they would walk away with a tidy profit.   The artist would often sign and number each print to generate perceived value.

Four-Color Offset Printing Press

Most successful artists, those represented by higher end art galleries and having works acquired by museums,  did not produce four-color offset limited edition reproductions of their artwork, but this type of print did provided a good income and exposure for many talented artists who did not achieve critical success with their original art.  Other than the value of enjoying an image you like on the wall, the resale market for limited edition prints of this type is most likely through garage and estate sales, or eBay, and their selling price will rarely exceed their original purchase price.

Giclée Prints

As printing technology moved on, in the 1990’s, the ink jet printer attached to a computer provided a new way that artists could produce limited edition prints.  The term Giclée was coined for high quality ink jet prints by Jack Duganne.   Duganne worked for Graham Nash, of Crosby, Stills, and Nash fame, and  Mac Holbert, the band’s road manager, who together started the fine art  printing business, Nash Editions, LTD in Nash’s Manhattan Beach, California carriage house.

The term  stuck and today, although technology has improved the giclée inkjet print to an exceptionally high level of fidelity and color quality, it is still used by many artists to make very high quality reproductive limited edition prints.  Because of these attributes some artists, especially photographers, are now using inkjet printers exclusively to print their editions.  Since these artists consider their inkjet prints to be the finished work of art, to distinguish their artworks from a giclée reproductions, some are calling their artworks’ medium “archival pigment prints.”

HP Large Format Inkjet Printer

In inkjet printing, a specific black or colored ink is blown onto the surface of a piece of paper in small droplets.  Their number and juxtaposition to other colored ink droplets determine the final color of each pixel that makes up an image.   Because of the incredibly small size of each pigment dot, there is no determinable dot pattern that is the hallmark of offset four-color printing.

Although individual inkjet prints are more expensive to produce in large editions than on a four-color offset press, they have many advantages:

  1. Inkjet color printers can work with as little as three ink colors but high-end printers can incorporate many more colored inks that allow more nuanced color and a thicker pigment density than four-color offset printing.
  2. Higher quality papers can be used in inkjet printing than in four-color offset.
  3. Because they are printed slowly one at a time, after they are proofed and ready to edition, inkjet prints are much cheaper to produce in a small edition.   An edition of 2,000 might take an hour on a high speed four-color press but an edition of 1000 inkjet prints of the same size would take days on a high-end inkjet printer.

For me personally, artwork in its conceived state has intrinsic value.  When an artwork’s medium is changed so it can be duplicated in large numbers for reasons of commerce, I am less interested in the  copy, no matter how beautiful it may be in its reproduced state.  Limited edition prints and reproductive giclée’s are certainly a blessing for those who cannot afford original art or are not interested in an artwork’s material or aesthetic aspects.  They allow one to enjoy an image and fill a space where an artwork is needed.  I have no doubt that there are many who would receive as much pleasure from a reproduction as I would get from an original.

I will caution anyone who buys a reproductive giclée or limited edition print thinking that it will turn out to be a good long term financial investment.  The odds of this happening are not in their favor.  Purchase only because you like the work or it fits your purpose at the time.  The true investment in art is the privilege of living with it.

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To see all available FAE Design Blog Posts,  jump to the Design Blog Table of Contents.

To see all available FAE Collector Blog Posts, jump to the Collector Blog Table of Contents.

Sign up with FAE to receive our newsletter, and never miss a new blog post or update! 

Browse fine artworks available to purchase on FAE.  Follow us on FacebookInstagram, or Twitter to stay updated about FAE and new blog posts.

For comments about this blog or suggestions for a future post, contact Kevin at [email protected].

Other FAE informational posts you may find helpful:
Fine Art Insurance 101Broken sculpture

 

An image of a painting carefully placed in the back seat of a carPractical Tips for Safely Transporting Artwork
An image of artworks carefully placed on on a bedTemporarily Storing Artwork: A Case Study
an image of a wall of shelves holding print boxesFour Artwork Storage Solutions
Hanging and Framing FAQ’s
outdoor image of a line of figure sculptures with arms raisedSiting Sculpture, Part One: Overview

 

facade of a modern house with a round sculpture sited in the front yardSiting Sculpture: Part Two, A Case Study
image of a wall of frame samplesThe Importance of a Proper Frame

 

an image of a graphic showing the entire spectrum of viable and non-visible lightWhen to Use UV Control Glazing
Two images showing an image of a flower behind reflective and reflection free glassReflection on the Problem of Reflections