What Happens When Your Photobook Publisher Makes Your Prints

I am preparing a longer post on my journey to find another source for color prints after the collapse of Peak Imaging here in the UK. During that journey I discovered that my favorite photobook publisher Mixam also offers what they call art prints.

I decided to see what they offered and ordered some A3 prints. One turned out not great, but I think this is due to a particularly challenging image and some of my poor post processing. The other image turned out really well. So let me answer what do you get, how does it work and why might this be my 'go to' place for prints. 

First of all, I like the look of traditional C-prints. Chromogenic prints (not what people imagine is continuous tone prints) use silver halide color paper from either Fuji or Kodak (Kodak does not actually make the paper any longer.) and expose the paper using lasers or LEDs. They are not continuous tone because they use a digital image and the light from the LEDs or lasers has its brightness adjusted according to the values in the digital file. It is still common for those on YouTube (and in the business) to call this continuous tone. Still the results are very good and have reasonable archival properties.

Mixam is a digital printing company aimed at mass producing books, posters, mailers, etc. They use an HP Indigo digital offset printer that uses a mix of inkjet and tonal printing. They have impressed me with the quality of the photo books they have made for me.

Their art prints are made on the same equipment and use the same inks. These inks are archival up to 200 years. Mixam offers a range of paper weights from 90 GSM to 400 GSM. I like the 400 GSM weight of paper. C-print papers run to about 90 GSM. 

Here is the thing with Mixam art prints, they are priced for volume.  For instance, my first test order was for 10 A3 prints. They will all be the same image as they are a printer and not a photo lab. However, I found they can print both sides of the paper with different images. This means I should be able to get two images from the order and mount whichever side I like. (I have also made two smaller prints on each side I can merely cut apart.)

In essence I am getting 5 copies of each image depending on which side I display. There are some different choices with respect to paper type (silk, gloss, uncoated, recycled etc), and coating (none, gloss, matte, and soft touch). Some combinations are not available depending on specific paper weights and types. Their web interface selector indicates which combinations are valid. (Their web interface is the best I have seen; you can try different combinations and get immediate price changes.)

I have used silk coated paper on my photobooks and like the gentle luster which has less sheen than the Fuji C-print matte paper. If you like gloss, then that is available as well. I added the soft touch lamination which cuts the sheen completely and I really like it especially if the image is not going to be glazed. Gloss and matte lamination are also available. These options don't move the price by more the £1. Unlike lab-based ink-jet printing you do not get access to the large variety The table below gives an idea of different large print sizes and costs. 

Size volume    Printing       Coating         Paper weight    Printer brand    Cost

A3    10 pcs     both sides    soft touch     350GSM            HP                 £16.50    

A2    10 pcs     both sides    soft touch     350 GSM          HP                 £23.50

A1    10pcs      both sides    soft touch     350 GSM          Heidelberg    £289.00

A1    10 pcs     one side      No finish       200GSM          Canon            £41.50

A0    10pcs     one side       No finish       200 GSM          Canon           £65.50

(As a reference a local UK photolab like A+M charges £7.20 for each A3 C-print. Snapfish is £6.99 each. AgPhotgraphic is £7.72 for their A3 C-prints.)

My first test order ended up being 10 pcs of A3 (297 x 420mm or 11.6 x 16.5") on 400 GSM silk paper with images on both sides and each side coated with 'soft touch' lamination. Printed in color. The total cost was £16.50 plus VAT (20%) and shipping. The images on each side are below. Note that I chose to retain the original images aspect ratio and left white borders on the print. These can be trimmed or masked off with matte board when framing and mounting. These images are 400dpi and 530 dpi respectively as I resized the original image without resampling the image. The first image was taken with the 35mm crop while the second retains the full sensor size of the Fuji GFX 50s ii. 

'Together' A3 Print

This print ('Together') was the one that impressed me the most. So much so that I made a frame for it and monted and framed it. It is now hanging on the wall quite satisfactorily.I wrote up this process here...

Bird Light A3 Print

My second test order was the same size, paper type and lamination as above. I reworked the Bird Light image; this time using Affinity instead of Photoshop Elements and was more careful about pushing the dynamic range on the image. The backside image was a new image which is a sunset image that was troubled when originally printed as a C-print. This was again reworked so I am hopeful about this one as well. 

Bird Light Mixam A3 (post in Affinity to tone down highlights)

Reworking this image above in post helped immensly; the banding is gone and the highlights are less blown. The highlights treatement remains a question of taste. Slightly blown highlights give a more bold image I think despite the lack of detail.

Peach Sunset Mixam A3 (post in Affinity to tone down highlights)

Here again the post processing helped but I think the overall brightness is not high enough. In normal room light I feel it loses some glow. 

Two prints on one A3 side 1

Two prints on one A3 side2

All of these prints came out well. The shadow in the rock could use a little more lightening. 

I did not line up the division between the prints front to back. This means that I would only get 2 prints per sheet. (This is due to the aspect ratio differences of the prints.) It doesn't really matter as one can only mount one side of the print for display.

Overall I am really pleased with the Mixam prints. The finish is very flat and that means the blacks are quite deep as light seems to fall into the paper, this is especially true on the mossy log print. 

One thing I did with an earlier photo book was to add a slot on the back cover where I placed 2 small black and white silver gelatin prints. For my most recent photo book I thought I could add a couple of these art prints. Since the photo book is A5 in size I opted to make two-sided A6 (105mm x 148mm or 4" x 6") 400 GSM card. Since there is a different image on each side, I would include two cards in each book. I have 20 books, so I ordered 50 cards (10 cards surplus). The cost is the same (£16.50) for up to 100 pcs.