Reproducing framed art: American Reprographics is 20 times faster, and still charge the same

“I see the value instantly because what I can scan, I can reproduce, so it’s leading to print volume and production value that was either cumbersome before or on the fence whether it was going to work out,” says Colin Treado with certainty. He is the owner and president of American Reprographics, Inc. in Rockville, Maryland close to Washington D.C.

American Reprographics invested in the new Contex contact-free art scanner, HD Apeiron/42 three months ago.

It has not just saved them time and improved their results, but also given them the chance to serve new markets and started expanding their business into other areas.

HD Apeiron/42 scanning art at American Reprographics Inc. Photo credit: Colin Treado.

Framed artwork digitized in minutes

American Reprographics often have customers come in with framed artwork that needs to be reproduced.

“Being able to scan something in a frame without taking off the frame is awesome,” Treado says.

Before getting the art scanner, they would have to dismantle the frame and for larger pieces scan them one quarter at a time on their flatbed scanner. The stitching of the four scans were done manually and the finished result was not always fully satisfactory, especially if the originals were rigid, making the stitching harder.

Reproducing framed art, starting with a scan on HD Apeiron/42. Photo credit: Colin Treado.

Today with HD Apeiron/42 their workflow is a lot simpler: Scanning the art piece still in the frame within a fraction of the time compared to earlier.

“I can charge the equivalent, and it takes 5 minutes instead of 1-2 hours. It’s easier and gets better results,” concludes Colin Treado. To put it more precisely their scanning workflow is now more than 20 times faster.

When the colors just match

Colin Treado usually spent time adjusting and correcting the digitized originals, but that has also changed: “I’m doing less color matching and color fixing. It’s truer to the original, just out of the box.”

The LED lighting in HD Apeiron/42 uses the full daylight spectrum with no UV/IR radiation, and the scanner scores four stars in the FADGI star system, which is defined as the best image practical today”. HD Apeiron/42 uses quad-linear CCDs to capture both RGB, and grey. The ICC color management is powered by X-Rite® making the color matching extremely accurate.

“The prints that I can create from those scans is what people get blown away by. That’s what brings people back being like “Wow, I didn’t know you could do this.”,” says Colin Treado and continues:

“The speed of it is great, the ease of it is great, no warm-up time is great. It’s solving problems without creating problems.”

Pursuing new customers for scanning

Regarding HD Apeiron/42, Colin Treado has one big wish: “The longer we have it, and the longer no-one else has one, I plan to pull in government work, archivist work, gallery work and maybe even Smithsonian work,” referring to the large American organization specializing in art conservation and the preservation of heritage.

Only time will show how well they manage, but a sign above the scanner has already pulled in work directly from the street. That can only be a good sign.

“I don’t like promising things I can’t deliver. With this, I can scan pretty much anything within the size range, and I can reproduce it because I have printers that print larger than what it can scan,” Colin Treado ends.