Review of Photo Tex (Repositionable Printable Fabric)

After seeing a profile for Photo Tex on Colorburst's website (looking for 3800 profiles...), I remembered reading about this product a few months ago and meaning to try it. So I tracked down two sample rolls, 24" by 5' each. This product, invented by South Korea, is similar to a standard 2 ply inkjet printable fabric crossed with an industrial strength post-it note. They claim that photo-tex will never lose its stickiness. Now never is a long time, but from my 30 day test, they don't seem to be lying. I repositioned the printed square I had cut (approx. 12" x 12") twice a day for 30 days on a wide variety of surfaces, and it is still sticking. It picked up a little debris from my brick wall, but not enough to negate its sticking power. Impressive. Even after being submerged in water for 3 days, it still stuck to anything I placed it on. With no damage. Even more impressive. Photo-tex states it will not damage anything it is placed on, making it an ideal product to place on your late 18th century library's wooden walls.

As for the printing, it doesn't 'pop' as much as I was hoping, but overall color is good. Bright reds seem to be effected, I printed my samples on a Canon ipf8000 which usually does well with signage. The printing does not seem to wear off over time or fade, another plus. The blacks are moderate. I would not print any sort of fine art on this material. Worth checking out if you have any type of POP or instore marketing clients.

Overall, I was very pleased with the material and am anxiously awaiting a chance to use it commercially (it is a bit on the expensive side). Much like Post Its when they were first released, Photo-tex aren't sharing their adhesive secrets or any of the technology behind this product.

-Michael

Photo-tex website - www.phototexgroup.com
picture from photo-tex website

Need a web designer?

If anyones in need of a web designer, I would highly recommend Jesse Crouch (jessecrouch.com). As well as being a talented photographer, he is an excellent designer and coder. He designed my current site (elevateprinting.com) as is in the process of writing all of the code for a custom shopping cart. He also has some interesting articles on low budget photography (a few of them we're on digg) as well as a gallery of his work at ifakedit.com. Examples of his webdesign and coding are at jessecrouch.com.


-Michael

Bert Monroy's Photoshop seminar

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Photoshop seminar being taught by Bert Monroy, who turns out to be an amazing speaker as well as teacher. One of the best seminars I've been to on a technical topic, definitely worth checking out if you live near one of the major cities. The price is a steal at $99 for an all day event ($79 for NAPP members). Bert Monroy also has great prints of his work for sale on his site, check them out.

www.bertmonroy.com
www.photoshopseminars.com

Why don't you take my fine art paper?

My Epson 3800 will not print on any type of fine art material that must be loaded through the separate fine art paper selector. That two dollar piece of flimsy plastic that Epson decided to include for me to slide onto the back of my printer is not really living up to the dreams I had for it. I made one successful 8.5x11 print on it after a mere 15 attempts to load from the back. No kidding, at least 15. Now I have been unsuccessful to load any bigger sheets into the back. I have been able to run it through the straight through path (designed for boards), but this isn't the easiest thing to do either.

Bottom line, 3800 is no fine art cranking machine and will be a hindrance to your workflow if you plan on mass printing on anything other than photo paper. Off to call Epson...

WEBSITE FINALLY UP!

I finally got my website up. http://ElevatePrinting.com . FTP up next week! Best of Articles I've written will be posted soon. If anyone needs prints for custom work, let me know... Its some of the most affordable printing you can get from people who actually understand color management (OK, does anyone fully?) and artistic views...

Michael

HP Announces Z6100, set to replace 5500

Being a faithful 5500 owner, I was anxiously awaiting its replacement. As I've mentioned earlier, the 5500 is based off a printer thats over 5 years old now. The HP Z6100 printer claims to print up to 1134 sq ft/hr, almost 10 times what the 5500 was capable of. And on top of that, much better quality. This is a big stab at the iPF8000 and ipf9000, obviously, and we'll have to see how it does. Its supposed to be shown in Vegas tomorrow, can't wait for the reviews.

Only info I've found so far...
www.itsupplies.com/static/HPZ6100.html