Epson printer star of National Portrait Gallery print-on-demand service
The National Portrait Gallery in London now has a dedicated print-on-demand kiosk in its Gallery shop with its Epson Stylus Pro 4880 taking centre stage. The large-format printer will be used to high A4, A3 and A2 prints on satin paper and canvas for the customer to take away within 30 minutes of order.
With 70,000 images available, a visitor uses the touch screen to browse by artist, sitter or collection. Once they have chosen their image, they are asked to make a size selection, which also displays the price, and after confirming the choice, pays at the till. Once payment is taken, the staff member changes the paper tray accordingly and releases the relevant print queue to output the print. The process from payment to production takes only a few minutes, and even if the customer has ordered multiple copies at different sizes, the maximum wait time is half an hour.
The Gallery has another printer in its basement warehouse, which usually fulfils website orders, but can be called upon to assist should the demand become excessive. Retail operations manager Rebecca Hossain said: “There is a huge surge in demand each summer when we have the BP Portrait Award exhibition. All the entries are available as prints and they are very popular.”
Hossain added: “The Stylus Pro range has the best reputation for quality, which was confirmed by our independent research and the fact that we have used Epson printers very happily for five years. A lot of pictures here are family portraits and some of those who visit know the paintings very well. If the colour is wrong, they will know. Our visitors literally have great expectations of what they expect from the print service.”
The Stylus Pro 4880 uses Epson’s UltraChrome K3 Vivid Magenta 8/9-colour ink set, which gives an exceptionally wide colour gamut and therefore the quality required by the National Portrait Gallery. The touch screen in the kiosk is driven by Picture Cabinet, image management software that is supplied by Cabinet UK. When the image is chosen it is sent to a web application at the till for payment and then sent to the print queue using Java. This adds white space around the image, the National Portrait Gallery’s copyright information and the name of the artist and the title of the painting. The printer is driven by a Fuji Rip and the print, if not canvas, is produced on Epson’s satin paper.