I recently completed a portrait project photographing high school varsity basketball athletes. The players were photographed in the school's studio and each chose a different "action" pose. The school will use the images as posters to hang in the hallway on game days.
Josh
Given the repeated hanging-up and taking-down of the posters throughout the season, I wanted them to be durable and not subject to bending, wrinkles or tearing. After a little research, I decided to print the images on vinyl using a solvent-based printer and mount them to Duraplast. The results were great (after a few test prints) and they are very sturdy.
If you have any experience printing black-and-white images to a solvent-based printer, you know the challenges I faced. It's not like sending a regular RGB photo to an inkjet. The image needs to be in the CMYK color space, and even then a magenta color cast can show up in the black-and-white images. After a few different test prints I arrived at a work-flow which included converting the images to grayscale (to ensure no color crept into the photos) making edits, and then converting them to CMYK just before print.
I have some background in graphic design and can find my way around Illustrator and InDesign, so I added some type to the images which included the player's name, number and the school's commonly used hashtag with a gradient effect in the background. Here's the final product...
Overall I'm really satisfied with the end product. The cost was reasonable; about $27 each at 16x24". They definitely have a commercial quality to them, and there's no doubt I could have achieved better prints with a traditional inkjet printer. However, the vinyl and Duraplast will ensure these can withstand heavy abuse and will be a great keep-sake for the athletes at the end of the season.