THE BEST WAY TO PRINT A PHOTOBOOK
1. Offset-litho. This is the traditional way of printing a book. The presses are designed to print in bulk, offering economies of scale. A typical run is 500+ copies. Anything less and the unit book price can become prohibitively high.
2. Digital-ink. The majority of photographers I work with want to make short-run, editioned books – typically between 10-150 copies. This number of books requires a short-run press. The one I favour is the industry-leading HP Indigo. It gives similar looking results on both coated and uncoated stock. Unlike offset-litho, it is cheap to print some loose sheets and make a mock-up, to experience how the final book will look, feel and handle.
3. Inkjet. This is for anyone with a desktop printer who wants a simple way to get into making photobooks. The print quality is excellent, but the labour intensive way of printing, especially if it is double-sided, limits the process to one-off or very short run books. The choice of suitable weight inkjet papers is somewhat limited, although there are some exquisite lightweight Japanese papers available.
Caroline Fraser's 'Land of my Father', produced as a digital-ink printed, hand finished, limited edition of 50 copies.
A metal die was used to foil-block the title onto the outer sleeve of Caroline Fraser's 'Land of my Father'.
Caroline Tollyfield's 'Songpost' was produced as an edition of 65 copies, of which 10 were a Collector's Edition with an original print on Japanese Awagami paper.
The foil-blocked sleeve for 'Songposts' was given a hand-cut deckle edge. The sleeve was glued with acid-free tape.
The folded sections of Caroline Tollyfield's 'Songpost' ready to be sewn at the Envisage Books studio.
Passing the press sheets for Joe Anthony's 'City to Wilderness Sri Lanka' book – printed with an HP Indigo digital-ink press..
A traditional 4-colour, offset-litho press, is the most economical way to print 500 copies and more.
Checking the pages of a traditional offset-litho book for Leeming & Paterson, at specialist photobook printer EBS.
Papers come in many weights, surfaces and colours. Inkjet, digital and offset-litho books each need their own type of paper.
If you want to learn about book making, here are some of the tools to make inkjet home-printed or short-run, digitally printed hand bound books.
Cotton, linen and hemp book binding threads, for hand sewn inkjet- and digitally-printed books.
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