Direct to Media Printing Overview
Direct to Media UV Printing is a large format, full colour plus white, ultra-fine inkjet printing process which allows artwork to be printed directly onto virtually any flat surface.
The nine colour channels are loaded with CMYK plus two light colours alongside white, varnish, and separate primer. These ultra-fine ink droplets are deposited directly onto the printing media, which is then almost instantly cured or dried by UV (ultraviolet) light. The specially developed ink droplets are bonded to the surface of your chosen media, giving you a smooth, stable, abrasion-resistant, and long-lasting image.
Advantages of Direct to Media Printing
Direct to Media UV Printing removes constraints existing with traditional photographic printing – you can now print on almost any substrate. Since 2013, we have worked with artists, photographers and interior designers to produce artwork using: Wood, Metal, Rubber, Glass, Mirrors, Plastics, Textiles, Ceramics, Stone (subject to size, weight and finish) and a whole range of composite materials including Dibond, Foamboard, Perspex, Acrylic, Styrene, PVC, Vinyl, Canvas, and many others. Direct to Media Printing can be produced on substrates up to 3m x 2m and up to 50mm in depth or larger sizes using roll-to-roll printing, giving artists greater flexibility in the production of works.
With little to no heat emitted from the LED lights, the Swiss Q Nyala LED printer offers new solutions for the challenges of printing heat-sensitive media such as paper or fabrics, offering unparalleled new possibilities for printing on extended substrates.
Added varnish enables a new high gloss or matte surface and further intensifies pieces with tactile finishes. The scope for such printing is vast: printed selectively or across the whole expanse of the piece.
Direct to Media printing is weather resistant for up to five years for outdoor applications, presenting new opportunities to display your work.
Regarding sustainability, lower power consumption, zero harmful constituents and ozone and modest maintenance requirements keep the environmental footprint of Direct to Media printing small.
Why Choose Genesis for Direct to Media Printing?
Our service encompasses colour management, correction, border addition, resizing, cropping, and directed printing. The cost of our service includes test prints, underscoring our confidence in uncompromising quality.
We also extend a 100% satisfaction guarantee to all of our services, pledging to either redo or refund should the outcome not fully meet your expectations.
Over 25 Years at the Forefront of Exhibition Production
In this video, we look behind the scenes to explore the variety of work we produce and some of the diverse range of clients we cater to. Offering a glimpse into the intricacies of our operations, we highlight the extensive print, mounting, and finishing services that define our commitment to quality and innovation.
What makes us so special?
The charge for test prints is included in the price of our printing services to ensure your work is exactly as you envision. Please request these at your time of order.
*The charge for test prints is redeemable against the price of a full print
Checks with our expert printing team include the following:
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- Colour management
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- Colour correction
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- Adding borders
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- Resizing and cropping images
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- Directed printing
We’re so confident in the quality of our services and that you’ll benefit from the way that we work, that we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee and will redo or refund the cost of your work if you’re not 100% happy with it.
When was the last time someone cared as much about your work as you do?
Genesis Imaging Price List
Click below for our Professional Printing and Mounting service price guide.
For queries about Framing, please contact our Client Service team who will happily provide you with a quote.
Speak to us
Get in touch
Looking for more information, have a question, or need help ordering? Our team would love to hear from you!
Order a Sample Pack
Our Professional Direct to Media UV Printing and Perspex Face Mounting services offer a multitude of substrate options, an example of which we have made available in a handy A5 sized pack.
Each substrate sample pack contains Direct to Media UV prints on Perspex, Foamex, Dibond (Brushed and white finishes) with a Perspex Face Mount and a Photographic C-type and Giclée Fine Art paper pack.
Substrate sample packs are charged at £16.00 (inc VAT) per pack, which is redeemable against your first order using our Direct to Media UV or Perspex Face Mounting Services.
FAQ
We produce prints using the Swiss Q Nyala printer, which you can find out more about here – https://www.swissqprint.com/en/
Yes, probably!
Our Direct to Media printer can print on virtually any flat substrate. Just some of the substrates that we’ve printed on include: wood, rubber, concrete, perspex, aluminium, Dibond, Foamex, PVC, glass, mirror…
If we haven’t printed on something before, that doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t be happy to try – please contact us for more information.
We do! Using our CNC Router we can precision cut your mounted prints or printed substrates to almost any shape your desire. The biggest advantage of CNC cutting in comparison to other profiling machines is in the level of accuracy achievable. CNC routers allow the cutting depth to be fully controlled – so accurately so that we can cut Perspex sheeting but leave the protective film intact. The precision of CNC routing means that little or no finishing is required after the material has been cut or engraved. See below for info on what a CNC router is.
A CNC machine is a precision profiling machine that uses three axes (X, Y and Z) to accurately cut, drill, and engrave. The “CNC’ of CNC Router stands for “computer numerical control’, it is a computer controlled cutting machine capable of cutting various sheet materials, such as wood, composite materials, metals such as aluminium and steel, plastics and foams, amongst others.
The UV inks that we use for our direct to media printing are archival for over 70 years. The overall archival stability of each piece is also determined by the substrate chosen to print to, and like any process, how you store your finished piece.
For outdoor use, Direct to Media UV printing is also weather-resistant for up to 5 years.
Because there is a hugely diverse range of substrates you can print to and almost limitless possibilities, please contact us for more information on specific substrates – one of our team would be very happy to talk you through your options.
The ultra-fine droplets of ink are deposited directly on to the printing media which is then almost instantly cured, or dried by UV (ultraviolet) light. The specially developed ink droplets are bonded to the surface of your chosen media – giving you a smooth, stable, abrasion resistant and long-lasting image. For outdoor applications, Direct to Media printing is weather resistant for up to five years.
Yes, it is! With our Direct to Media UV printing service, certain areas can be chosen for the material beneath to show though. If you print to Aluminium, or another sheet metal, this will be metallic in sections.
Your files can be sent to us using our handy upload form, via email, or using services such as Dropbox or Wetransfer. Once you’ve sent your files to us we will contact you to confirm your order.
Our preferred choice of colour profile for the best possible photographic printing with our very carefully controlled ICC workflow is Adobe RGB (1998), although we do accept files in other colour profiles- if in doubt, please do not hesitate to give us a call on 020 7384 6200.
You can also download our Lambda Profile to see a fairly accurate softproof preview of the printed output on your screen (if your monitor is properly calibrated). We calibrate our Lambda Colour Profile frequently so please download the latest version from the link above.
After downloading the profile of your choice simply drop it into the following folder on your mac – / Library / ColorSync / Profiles folder or the / Users / username / Library / ColorSync / Profiles folder. Then restart Photoshop, open your image and choose from the top menu Edit > Assign Profile. In the dialogue box that appears select the Lambda profile from the Profile drop menu. This temporarily assigns the Lambda profile to the image without converting colours to the profile space. You can permanently assign the Lambda Profile to your image by choosing from the top menu Edit > Convert to Profile and then from the dialogue box that appears choose the Lambda Profile from the Destination Space Profile drop menu.
For PC users the path to place the Lambda profile in is WINDOWS system32 spool drivers colour folder.
If you have any questions about colour profiles please feel free to call and one of our friendly and knowledgeable staff will be pleased to help you.
As a general guide for colour prints on either our Giclée or Lambda printers, your images should be in RGB, any layers flattened and preferably saved as a Tiff file (.tif) with LZW compression. This will maximize the quality of your image and also keep the file size down. Other file formats are acceptable such as a layered tiff or photoshop document (.psd) but these will have an inherently larger file size. Jpegs (.jpg) are fine for smaller prints but because of their image lossy nature it is not recommended that you save any files in this format. Images shot as in-camera Jpegs are once again mostly suited to small to medium prints. Naturally we are also happy to accept RAW camera files.
Once again, please do not hesitate to get in contact if you have any questions about file formats for photographic prints.
We check all files prior to printing and will call you should we notice any loss of quality at the print size you require.
As a rule of thumb – the larger the print size required, the larger the file size must be. There is however some leeway with the image resolution or dpi and how our Giclée or Lambda printers deal with this. For instance: if your image file is approximately 20MB at 400 dpi it will make an excellent print at A5 size. The same 20MB file will still make an excellent 10×8” print at 300 dpi, and a very good 16×12” print at 200 dpi. If you are in any doubt, go for a higher resolution for the print size required. Please contact us if you need any further assistance with file sizes for photographic prints.
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