Digital BW, The Print

Oh yes. I've thought a lot about it in the beginning, but not recently.

And I'll also say that I don't do primarily artist painting
reproductions, but if I did I would probably approach it the same way
I do now, I think.....and if I were set up to do digital capture of
the painting I'd charge a lot for that up front.

I think you have to sit down and make a personal decision about this
kind of model and the most important thing is to stick with your
decision and not change the rules in mid stream if you can help it.
That's what makes people mad. There is no art law that says you have
keep position of someones files that you worked on, or that you can't.

The way I decided to approach it is - I give every file 15 free
minutes of Photoshop work. For decent files that aren't manipulated
that is usually all I need. For any computer time over that I charge
$75.00/hr, which is very cheap by advertising standards and I should
raise that now. Of course bigger files require more time expended. So,
if a person has added work done, and many do, they pay for it up front
and then it is their baby from then on. Like Tyler said, do we really
want to be responsible for that file long term? I don't. If they take
it to Kmart or Kinkos it's their cheap output they will end up with
and its out of my hands. 
 
The bigger issue we deal with, that I also saw coming in the
beginning, is doing all this work and then they buy their own Epson or
have a friend who has one, and output their additonal prints next.
That happens and it happens to me every year. But as we all know it
isn't as easy as it sounds and anyone with color management skills
isn't going to work very cheap for long. All I can do is charge as
much as I can up front and try to do a level of work that they can't
do. Everyone has their own methods.

I'd love to hear Walker and Bill discuss this sometime.

john - off for the week....may your prints have invisible dottage 





--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Morse"
<Bill.Morse@...> wrote:
>
> Hi John-
> In the case of files that I have prepared, eg a drum scan to print, or a
> painting reproduction, I currently don't give the customer the file,
unless
> they pay extra for it, because I don't want them taking the file to
another
> printer and printing it for cheap. Have you (or anyone else) considered
> this, and how do you protect yourself?
> 
> Bill
>