[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Ann, I don't have a detailed list of what we've tried and what the results were >over the years, but one year we tried printing the calendars on card stock and >the ink consumption was RIDICULOUS.
I've done some research into doing what Ann is trying to do (printing calendars, etc.) and found it prohibitively expensive :( I could get the price down to about $11.00 per calendar with 4-color offset printing through a friend who owned a printing business, but that was with a minimum order of 500 calendars. With an order of 1000 calendars the price per unit dropped to around $6.00 if I recall correctly - the bulk of the cost is in setup and preparation. But I don't think I could get anywhere close to even the $11.00 price with my inkjet. Of course with the inkjet the minimum order quantity is 1! I did some research into a new Kodak/Heidelburg process called Nexpress, which is a laserprinter-like process. I found the quality inferior to inkjet and the price barely better than 4-color offset printing (though they might have jacked up the prices on me for reasons I won't get into now). Xerox is working on a competitor to Nexpress which has much better print quality and equivalent or lower pricing, but the Xerox system isn't on the market yet. I'm surprised there's no printing company that's tried to make a business specifically around doing calendars for photographers; they'd just need to set up a basic calendar template and plug specific photo files into it. I looked for such a setup and couldn't find one. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
