Digital BW, The Print

I need to bind a wedding album for a friend.  

I shot the wedding digitally; the bride wants it printed B&W.  I've 
chosen to not print individual images, but rather to compose pages and 
do a layout for them.  I'm leaning toward 13x19, but wonder if that 
may be too large.  I'll be printing the project as duotones on an 
Epson 4800 and would prefer using matt (but probably not textured) 
paper. 

The big question is: "How do I bind this sucker?"  I'd like it to be 
contemporary, understated, and personal.  I have yet to see anything 
commercially produced that I like enough to purchase.  I'm perfectly 
willing to create my own from scratch if it comes to that.

Thanks in advance,

Karl Wolz

Hello Karl,

Your best bet is sending your printed pages to a traditional bindery.
However there may be complications in using matte media in an album.
Ink on one page will rub off on the facing page so you would have to
coat the prints. Typically bindery will refuse to coat matte media so
you'd have to coat them yourself.

But coating matte prints in an album is very different from coating
them for archival purpose. For the former you'd have to lay the
coating on relatively thick to prevent ink rub off. This necessitate
reprofiling for the coated media as you will observe significant hue
and density shift, and your print will no longer be matte.

It appears you may be better off using glossy media which accepts
coating relatively easier. But even with these you have to experiment
to see which coating works best.

There is one media which I know works great with the R1800: HP premium
plus satin or glossy. Though this media is not recommended or even
designed for pigment ink, it works amazingly well. The swellable
polymer coating on it receives the ink and seals it much like the best
spray coating you can find out there, and it accepts Premiere
PrintShield better than anything I've seen. But you must let the print
cure for a week before stacking the prints or spraying them with
PrintShield.

(I wish I had a wedding client who wants matte no matter how hard I
try to sell it. I even went as far as making two albums, a matte and a
glossy, and ended up keeping the matte for myself).

--nick

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "wolzphoto"
<wolzphoto@...> wrote:

> I need to bind a wedding album ...
> I'll be printing the project as duotones on an
> Epson 4800 and would prefer using matt (but
> probably not textured) paper.
> ...