Raw versus Print Ready Scans - what's the difference?

We offer two levels of service with our Art Reproduction Services.

The results from each level of service are really quite different and it's thus really important you understand what you're ordering, so that you know exactly what you can expect back from our service.

Almost everyone chooses our Print Ready Artwork Scans - and this is the service we will generally recommend in almost all cases.  

When you choose this service, we do all of the hard stuff for you, and the files you receive are (almost!) completely ready for any task you might want to use them for later - from fine art prints, through to website images, files for decor items etc, this one digital master file is your long term digital asset and - we really can't stress this enough! - you should back it up very carefully as it will be valuable for the rest of your career as an artist!

But what exactly is a Print Ready Scan?  The first thing to be sure you understand is a Print Ready Scan is a digital asset - i.e. it is pretty much ready for print, but is not yet fully set up (notably, in sizing terms) for print.  You will get back an A4 proof print as part of this service, so you can see exactly what we have achieved at the end of our standard print ready service.

Print Ready scans means your artworks have been scanned and those scans have then been prepared and finessed to the point of being ready for print - specifically this usually means the following work has been done:

• They will be cleaned of dust, fibres, scratches, blemishes
• Any background paper tone has been stripped
• Final Tonality/colour balancing work (to bring the scan as close as possible to the original)
• (Optional) removal of signature etc.
• We produce an A4 proof print at this point as part of the service.
  
• (N.B. this is a time budgeted service - please see caveat notes in green below!)
  

What you receive back is a Digital Master File.  It's ready for print in all ways - except for sizing & layout. (Plus the A4 proof print mentioned above, of course!).

It is this master file from which all 'further' files can be prepared.    Here, 'further' means a file created from this Master File, for a specific purpose - e.g. an A2 fine art print layout, or an image for the header of your website, or....well, really any specific purpose you have in mind! 

The more basic (and cheaper!) service is Raw Scans (often written as RAW scans, although it's not actually an acronym).

This service is only appropriate for people:

• Having strong image editing skills and significant experience working with digital images - ideally specifically with Art Reproduction scans
• Owning high quality equipment for working on these images (like an Eizo Coloredge or BenQ SW monitor - and one that is correctly and frequently calibrated).
  
• (...Or, possibly, as archive scans of a work if you're not sure what you will be later doing with your scans but want a minimum archive file in place as you are selling the original work - but see notes below!).

Raw scans are as the name implies - they are the 'raw' result - i.e. completely unedited - of what comes from our artwork scanning machine - put simply we place your work in our machine and hit the 'scan' button, and the resulting file if what you get, as is.

Now, our artwork scanner is an extremely high quality machine and what it produces is really nothing like the results from typical desktop scanners, even reasonably good ones like the Epson V series scanners.   And, just as importantly, we know exactly what we're doing with this remarkable machine, and how to produce from it a flexible raw scan that is ready for later work and contains all the details and quality of your original work.

When we say 600 or 1200 PPI - it's nothing like what an Epson produces in its fake 600 PPI mode (or even in its ridiculously fake 4800 PPI mode!).  Our scanner is remarkably sharp and capable of picking up ALL the detail in the original work (these scanners are used by museums and galleries world-wide to scan works of major importance).  This of course means it will also pick up every speck of dust, fibres, scratches, and really whatever detritus might be sitting on the surfaces of your images. Our 600 PPI scans can generally be reproduced 4 times the original's size, at superb quality. 1200 PPI scans can be reproduced up to 16 times the original size, or more. Though note often at this point the limitations for enlargement come down more to how fine the detail is in an artwork than the resolution it's scanned at.  

What you get back is the file as it comes directly from the scanner, warts and all.  

So the scans are great, but they are very much raw and in need of finishing work.  This means you will need to do ALL of the remaining work - including those things listed above (i.e. all dust/fibre/scratch cleaning, stripping of the paper tone, colour and tonality work etc).  Of course we clean our scanner scrupulously, but the reality is the scanner is so sharp, and the world so full of dust etc., there is always a good amount of cleaning work to be done on a raw scan.

Some of the work raw scans need is relatively simple but tedious (i.e. the cleaning) - but some of the needed work can be very very tricky indeed to do really well (i.e. paper tone stripping & final colour balancing).  We have vast experience with this work (decades at this point!), and it is unlikely you will be able to produce the same quality of work we can, unless you are very experienced (or your artworks are of a very simple type).  And we don't have the capacity within our busy work day to teach you how to do this work to a high quality level - so you are, essentially, on your own with this.  

Whilst we can work on your RAW scans at a date after the initial scanning (i.e. complete this print ready work for you from a previously prepared Image Science Raw Scan) - it will end up costing you noticeably more if we have to do the work in two jobs, and also taking distinctly more time.  And, to really do the work properly at a later time, we really need the originals back in our studio for reference - and of course you might not have those at that point. 

So in all, we strongly recommend Print Ready scanning as the service appropriate in most cases.  Yes, you're investing more initially, but you get back a perfect digital asset of tremendous value, something you can potentially use for decades to come to produce further income from your original work.