Printing Your Photos on Metal
Have you been thinking about printing your photos on metal but aren’t sure what the difference is between the various Metal Print options? Are you wondering whether your image would look better on a Classic Metal Print or an HD Metal Print? Or maybe you’re just curious about how Metal Prints are made? In this video, Posterjack’s president, Tim Faught, explains everything you need to know about Metal Prints so you can choose the perfect one for your photo.
Related: HD Metal Prints vs. Canvas Prints - Comparing Photo Art Products
Video Transcript
Hi, it's Tim here for Posterjack and I want to talk to you today a little bit about our Metal Prints. They’re a really exciting style of print. They’re often asked about, and people are experimenting with them. [They’re] extremely popular and we’re getting some really great results with people printing their photos and their digital artwork on Metal Prints, and this is something we're quite experienced with, we’ve been producing them since 2011. We’re actually the first company in Canada to start printing and selling Metal Prints to consumers, so we know a little bit about them. We’ve got three different styles; our classic brushed metal, our classic white, and our HD glossy.
The Differences Between Metal Prints
The very first style that we came up with was the Classic Silver Metal Prints, and in this one you can see it's actually silver, it looks like metal. So metal is what you’re expecting, metal is what you're gonna get. Anywhere there's white in your photograph, if there's a cloud, if there’s a bride's dress, it's gonna turn metal, so we don't necessarily recommend this one for portraiture because you might get unexpected results. Unless you really want that look, it’s better used for artistic interpretations.
For a Classic White Metal, you get a very sophisticated, yet universal, look. This is probably the best choice for most people. It’s a satin-matte finish, so you have a nice bit of sheen but you won't be getting any glare on your Metal Print. It makes it easy to hang in almost any situation, whether there's a wall with bright lights or overhead lighting, you’re not gonna get that sheen. It’s a very sophisticated look.
And the third is our HD Metal Print. It's our newest lineup that we’ve introduced in 2017, so we’ve been doing it for a while as well, and it's a high-gloss metal print. It’s got a lot of wow-factor to it, you’ve got really rich colours, and we're using the dye-sublimation process to infuse the inks right into the top coating of this metal sheet, so the colours stay true but very vibrant. You get a detailed and glossy print, and that's maybe only the one downside, is that it's extremely glossy, so if you're hanging it in a situation where there's a lot of glare, it’s going to reflect just like you would get a reflection off of glass or off our Acrylic Prints.
How We Make Our Metal Prints
So, getting into how we make Metal Prints, we’ve got two different processes: one for the Classic Metal Prints and one for the HD Metal Prints.
The Classics are the ones that we started off with, and we make these with UV printers, AGFA inks, and AGFA printers, and we print directly on to the metal substrate.
For the HD Metal Prints, we’re using a dye-sublimation process, so we're printing with Epson dye-sublimation inks and then we're sublimating right onto the ChromaLuxe aluminum panel.
Hanging Your Metal Print
Now when you order any of our Metal Prints, you’ve got a choice of hanging options. One of the options, you can see here on the back of these Metal Prints here, is our Float Mount. It is one of our most popular choices because it makes a nice modern, clean look. You don't see the hanging hardware from the front of the print when it's hung on the wall, and it’s a half-inch off the wall. It comes with a hanging wire; very easy to mount and install. You can also choose to have a Standoff Kit, where we’re gonna pre-drill a hole in all four corners of the print and supply you with standoffs. On some certain Metal Prints, you can also choose to have a modern float mount, which is a large one-and-a-half-inch deep frame to give it more presence on the wall. Or lastly, on our smaller sizes, we’ve got easels so that you can set them up to display on your mantel or shelf, etcetera.
