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Australia is the country of the panorama so why not start printing panoramic cards for XMAS. Red River is the world's largest maker of inkjet printable cards and GMS is the exclusive importer. Put that together and you can get top quality US made cards and envelopes from GMS for about 1⁄2 the price of some of the smaller resellers. The new pre-scored Pano cards fold to 9” by 4” and are available in premium matt for face printing of the image and text on the reverse side. When shooting for panoramas please don't forget the images are just as often used in a vertical format. The traditional range of Red River cards is available for printing your images this XMAS. Why not express your individuality with a custom made XMAS card. |
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GMS has introduced one of America's most well known inkjet canvas products – Moab Anasazi. This is made possible by the stronger $AU. GMS is offering this product at the same price as InkjetPro Premium Edition till 1st Jan 2010. The creation of the then owner of Moab – Greg Schern in 2003, Anasazi appeared at a similar time to InkjePro Premium Edition and has very similar image performance. Anasazi has benchmark product consistency with large generous packaging and an over engineered receptor that tolerates over inking of the matt black. Simply do a Google search on the name and see that it is sold at all the best cameras stores throughout the USA. Anasazi is an instant dry product that has very high water resistance. The product is available in both matt and satin and BOTH are water resistant, accepting Aquathane-UV and the other liquid laminates in the normal manner. Anasazi matt is 350gsm and 21mil in thickness. The product is thicker than InkjetPro Premium Edition, which is 19 mil max so the texture is more prominent but not over the top. The two canvas types are therefore complimentary and most people will use the same profiles on Epson or Canon machines. Anasazi stretches well like Premium Edition and is as crack resistant as it gets. Available in the usual sizes like 50 inch as well as 24 inch, 36 ince, 44 inch and 60 inch. Anasazi Satin is being introduced into Australia before general availability in the USA. It is a niche product for those Epson users with machines that either cannot accept matt black or where it is uneconomical to change the black inks. Anasazi Satin is a far cry from the old coarse glossy products that couldn't be water based liquid laminated. This product is just as much at home with all the water based spray laminates as a matt product. You can now happily use photo black on all your products if you still have an Epson 9800 or similar. As a bonus, Anasazi Satin 450 is far less expensive than most other satin products. Anasazi is GMS's new cotton/poly flagship for canvas printing. |
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Legions Museo Portfolio Rag (by Crane USA) is a new Ultrasmooth Rag paper that GMS is introducing to complement Moab by Legions benchmark Entrada range. Entrada remains the benchmark photo rag due to a pleasing light texture and well chosen white points. But Entrada's very slight texture needs to be complimented by a mid white point ultrasmooth and Museo Portfolio Rag fits that bill perfectly. Museo Portfolio Rag is a sensible 300gsm and targeted at botanical or Photoshop artists that need great detail. The product has a bright surface and good DMAX and available in A3+ and most common roll sizes. Portfolio rag offers a new brightening strategy using reflective techniques that lie somewhere between Bright and Natural. It is certainly the newest entrant and probably the category killer in this segment leaving older designs like Epson Ultrasmooth light years behind. |
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Our sellout PMA 2009 special returns for Christmas. The GMS $50 (inc) a 17 inch roll offer was a sellout at PMA 2009. We have decided to run the offer again for XMAS for those that can purchase in bulk. The offer includes GST but excludes transportation. This is our InkjetPro Premium Edition product so its not something that we don't want or is being discontinued. And for those 44 inch and 24 inch users the recent strength in the $AU has brought substantial and continuing price reductions. GMS offers its 100% cotton bright white seedless InkjetPro Commercial Edition Canvas product that is made for bulk photo production for $200 a 44 inch roll (ex GST) when purchased 5 at a time and $100 (ex GST) for 24 inch when purchased 10 at a time. The roll is 25% longer than normal, the canvas is made to operate with reduced inkloads for lower production costs in the photo printing industry. InkjetPro Commercial Edition is acid free and is built with industry leading quality control offering a 100% cotton product with the same reliability as cotton/polyester. The product has been independatly tested by the Image Permance Institute to last in excess of 50 years when coated with Aquathane-UV. The terms of the offer is the product is not for resale or export in its unprinted state. |
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GMS is announcing the introduction of Moab's top of the range Lasal Professional 300gsm archival photo lustre paper. This paper will be introduced into Australia during 2010 for the same price as the 270gsm variation, thanks to an improved $AU. The paper is targeted at professional roll printers exclusively and will not be issued in smaller sheets where 270gsm will remain. Lasal 300 has a new formula coating over a thick 300gsm resin coated photo base. Its surface is whiter but features a less aggressive use of traditional OBA which allows it to match common mounting boards. The product is not reverse printed with the makers name and the coating is highly resistant to humidity and ozone. Unlike cheaper photo papers, Lasal Professional 300gsm is water resistant and acid free. Sizes will range up to 60 inches. In addition to the Lasal professional Range GMS is also introducing Lasal Luster 190 replacing our previous GMS 190 proofing paper. The new 190gsm paper is a considerable upgrade in finish, imaging and longevity. It is the equal of the current Lasal Luster 270gsm but at a vastly reduced price equivalent to the old GMS proofing. Lasal Luster 190 is acid free and suitable for the use as book covers, solid over lamination for signage or anywhere a lower cost (but not lower quality) photo paper is required. Lasal Luster 190 is available in 24 and 44 inch by 30 metre rolls immediately and can be converted to other sizes such as 42 inch on request (December 2009). Lasal Professional 300gsm will become the GMS flagship in photo papers for professional usage. Lasal Luster 190gsm is an economical utility product that makes no sacrifice in image quality or longevity. |
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Buy a Canon LFP Printer and get the hottest selling Canon Camera for FREE!!! |
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Canon USA have announced new accelerated fade test results for the image PROGRAF X100 and X200 series machines. Like the results for the previous Lucia inked machines these results average around 100 years for color images and over 200 years for monochrome. This report is interesting in that the featured machine is not the top of the line model but the more widely installed iPF6100. So for those who obtained that machine for around $3000 AU this year it can be seen that very high quality and saleable exhibition work doesn't have to be turned out on a larger device. |
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It was not the most memorable year for aqueous Wide Format devices with none of the makers showing any significant new models. There was more action in the signage industry with HP's Latex and Mutoh's stunning corn oil power 1608 Hybrid but the ever lower cost ECO solvent devices continue to rule. While Mutoh's ink certainly claims the prize for its green credentials, HP has far outspent it in marketing where the spin doctors have worked overtime. Looking forward to a brighter 2010 we speculate that Canon are due to revamp the pigment end of the Wide Format market. Coming from a strong technological base with true 12 color printing and all RED Green and Blue inks loaded, another gamut increase appears likely without the need of a “button” on the console to change black inks (as with competitive wide format printers) and significant speed increases at all resolutions. So 2009 will have to be remembered as the year of the cashback. For all those customers that purchased machines at prices that may never be bettered, please enjoy the results. In real terms many people installed a current technology 12 color printer for about $3K AU. That machine is unlikely to be substantially bettered by any new model and prints with a color gamut and longevity that no silver halide process can match. If you would like one of the Canon wide format devices at the cash back price, we are sorry. The offer was a complete sellout. Potential customers should consider the new camera and printer packages that are cheaper than each item available individually. |
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2009 is not a Photokina year and very few real innovations were made to cameras themselves. We saw Canons 7D and 1D4, that are new models and of merit but can be argued to be fixes to the problems of their predecessors the 50D and 1D3. Leica has come back from irrelevance with the M9. And looking back this may stand as the announcement of the year. At Photokina 2008 I saw the Leica S2 almost Medium format DSLR and asked myself - why? But with the Leica M9 it is obvious. For the first time we have a really compact full frame package that can produce really big canvas enlargements without the bulk of the mirror and prism housing. The same can't be said for the 4/3rds system. The sensor isn't full frame and that's the minimum sensor size for a non sporting professional photographer. The logic of making the pixels larger has finally spilled over to Canons compacts and the G11, the much awaited successor to the G10 has almost 1/3rd less pixel quantity – why? Well more isn't always better and the G11 has the edge at higher ISO but if you have a G10 you will notice that it's the better of the two at 80ISO so the used value of your camera should increase. But the appeal of the G cameras is their use as a professional backup with RAW mode shooting and in 2009 the range has lost its crown to another. Our camera of the year – the Canon S90. The S90 packs most of the G11 features including RAW mode into a smaller and cheaper package and no professional should be without one. For me it replaces both a true pocket device and the G10. Should you need more performance in a small package the only real option is the Leica M9 and it requires over 20 times the investment to join that club. As GMS doesn't sell the Leica M9 (In Victoria you will have to see Frank at Photo Production house for that) this year's winner is the Canon Powershot S90 and its available for $594 excluding GST with an Australian warranty. |
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2009 will be remembered not as the year for any great advance in printing or raw conversion software but for the introduction of the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. GMS has constantly recommended against wide format printer users installing Windows Vista in either 32 or 64 bit guise. Vista is a bloated and poor performing operating system which stalled the trend to 64 bit architecture and limited many of us to about 3MB of RAM. With file sizes creeping up over the years of Windows XP it is becoming increasingly difficult to use Adobe Photoshop in such a constraint. And the introduction of Windows 7 represents the perfect time to make a break with the old world and install again using 64 bit memory addressing and the speed it gives. All those users of the Canon wide format printers will find the transition an easy one as all the current wide format printers and even the old ones back to the w8400 work happily under Windows 7 64 (and 32). We can report that Windows 7 is both responsive and extremely stable and if you have one of the later Adobe Photoshops (CS3 or 4) it is a pleasure to manipulate and stitch large images at the same time as printing a multi meter canvas. Epson users will mostly also be happy as, like Canon, with the first availability of Windows 7 all of the current range are functional. Users of the enduring Epson 9600 and 7600 have been left out in the cold with no announcement of compatibility at 64 bit. GMS intends to demonstrate how to get this venerable but excellent performer to operate in the new world by the use of virtualization in its forth coming 2010 “Printing for Profit Courses” Mac users also had reason to celebrate but not from the availability of Snow Leopard which is closer to a Microsoft fixpack than any real new function. With many users running the MAC OS underneath Windows using VMWARE the writing was on the wall and Apple hit back with a stunning new range of iMAC's. That reduces the financial benefits of hacking the operating system to run on standard hardware. The new iMAC features a range topping 27 inch LED display with an Intel i7 quad core processor and 4GB of DDR3 ram for under $3K. GMS believes this machine is perfect for running Snow Leopard with a virtual Windows partition for Qimage to do the printing. It would make a good home for those many hundred Canon rebates that have been processed. |
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Many Epson users have never discovered the color density control that has been present in the drivers since the Epson 9600. This control allows the user to reduce the overall ink limits consistent with the loaded media types. GMS has noted that many matt canvas types suffer from over-inking and that the newer heads of the Epson 7880, 9900 and 11880 often clog despite the claim that they are improved. When printing a black step wedge (available on the GMS website) it can often be seen that the overall color density can be decreased by 5-10% without effecting the DMAX or gamut of the result on many machines. This reduces the ink and leads to less clogging and less dark patch ink blotching. Ink blotching in the dark area is often caused by excessive amounts of ink. The excessive ink blocks some shadow detail and often forms light and dark areas while its still liquid on the surface. The effect is often hard to repeat and the user may assume (falsely) that the canvas is at fault. Before profiling its important to set the overall color density by the use of charts. In many cases modern canvas types need less ink than set as default by the maker and much more if using raw fabrics. Simply purchasing an inbuilt spectrometer for your printer will not help you with this setting as it is a garbage in garbage out process. So reduce color density where possible to reduce blotching and head clogs. The process also reduces cost and ink transfer to the hands. |
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GMS is closed from December 24th 2009 to Jan 6th 2010 inclusive. We greatly value our business relationships and take pride in the many successful businesses we supply. The joy brought by a beautifully printed and presented image that endures for many years is tremendous and is what our industry is all about. So take pride in the immense enjoyment your printed results bring. Our aim is to continue to supply media, ink and framing systems at the lowest prices with the best available service. So celebrate this Christmas, enjoy the holiday period and here's to a successful and prosperous 2010. Anne-Marie Connelly |
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