Museum-quality Printing, Profiling, & Color Matching System Makes For "Perfectly Beautiful" Solution To Prestigious Exhibit Deadline

The photographs created by Andy Katz have taken him around the globe and have won him international renown. He has traveled through the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa seeking subjects for his varied canon of work, along with places (literally) closer to home - the California wine country where he now lives. His highly evocative photos can be seen in his acclaimed books such as A Portrait of Napa and Sonoma; Private Reserve and The Heart of Burgundy; Tuscany and Its Wines; and Vineyard as well as in museums and galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad. (http://www.andykatzphotography.com/).

Dream Support For Mixed Emotions
His latest exhibit, Mixed Emotions, opened for a special summer showing that ran from May until September 2007 at Napa's prestigious fine art photography gallery, the Mumm. (http://mummnapa.com/).

Katz got the call about the possibility of mounting the show just as he was leaving for India. He was very interested in participating, even though time would be tight. He accepted, and Mixed Emotions opened right on time, featuring three shots from India in the exhibit's spectacular travel photos. Mixed Emotions also showcases his famed pastoral wine country images.

He credits his ability to pull together the exhibit in record time to Hewlett Packard's new printer series Designjet Z Photo Printer series. The Series was developed to deliver creative professionals with breakthrough color accuracy, consistency and superb ease of use in end-to-end color printing solutions. It features the industry's first embedded spectrophotometer based on the X-Rite i1 technology. The X-Rite Swiss-engineered color-measuring device ensures accurate, seamless monitor-to-print color matching for consistent results and creates profiles for new media. Hewlett Packard offers three versions of the pigment ink printers, each in 21- and 44- inch models: HP Designjet Z2100 with 8 inks, HP Designjet Z3100 with 12 inks and HP Designjet Z3100ps GP with 12 inks . Katz received the HP Designjet Z3100, right before his trip.

The arrival of the HP Designjet Z3100 played a big part in the photographer's willingness to move ahead with the exhibit. "I'd just gotten the Z when I said yes to the Mumm, and, really, it was the reason I could pull together a show in three weeks. The system was a total dream to use," Katz reveals. "You can just go get a cup of coffee and let it calibrate. It's that easy."

A Pure View of Technology
Interestingly it is this simplification of complex tasks - both in and outside the darkroom - that makes a photographic "purist" like Katz embrace technology. Katz, who shoots in both black and white and color, is known for capturing "true to life" images that are unposed and for the rich compositions in his pastoral landscapes by relying on nothing but natural light. Yet for all his aversion to "tweaking" a subject, Katz has no problems adopting new technologies as they come along. He incorporated digital along with film two years ago. In fact, Katz says he shot photos for his book New Zealand: Sea, Earth, Sky digitally. "The beauty of digital is that it just gets better; every year new software comes out to improve it."

Katz feels much the same about the production end. "Why would I want to spend more time in the darkroom than I have to?" he asks. "The color management embedded in the Designjet delivers beautiful tones and midtones, with phenomenal shadow detail."

Mounted on the printer carriage with completely self-contained optics and electronics, the embedded X-Rite spectrophotometer greatly simplifies accurate color matching. It also enables automated ICC profiling and HP Advanced Closed-Loop Color Calibration. Combined with the Designjet Z Photo Printer series' HP Vivera pigment ink technology and the system's intelligent ink delivery system photographers can produce color-accurate, museum-quality prints time and time again.

"The HP Gloss Enhancer worked fabulously with certain papers, and the entire system was totally efficient, even when switching papers," he adds. Much of Mixed Emotions was produced on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag® Pearl 320gsm.

Katz clearly sees the benefits. "The Z Series has a really well thought out design, perfectly beautiful, efficient, and very easy to use," he says.

For more on Andy Katz, visit http://www.andykatzphotography.com/.
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