Our Materials

Old Town Editions uses the best printers, image capture, and scanning equipment available for art reproduction and digital fine art printing. We constantly watch the market for advances in printing materials and equipment in order to create a better print for our clients. We choose our equipment by regularly testing the brands and models ourselves to decide what is best. We do not rely on online reviews when considering new equipment, but rather our physical tests. We also maintain our equipment at the highest level, performing regular manual calibrations and color profiling to ensure consistent print quality.

We take our material and equipment choice very seriously here at Old Town Editions.  We use only the finest most archival materials during our process.  We will never substitute an lesser quality materials or equipment into our workflow.  All of our equipment and materials is specifically designed for fine detail archival printing.  We do not offer any lesser quality or volume printing in conjunction with our digital fine art printmaking services because it will degrade the equipment that we spend so much time fine tuning for detailed printing.

We choose our papers not only on extensive testing and longevity, but also on how long a manufacturer has offered a paper or canvas. Because new products often come and go. With archival pigment prints or giclees ready to be ordered on demand it is important to choose materials that will be here for years and decades to come.

New Epson printer still in the box outside our studio in Alexandria, Virginia

If you choose a paper that has only been in existence for a year and out of existence next year your edition has ended prematurely.  Because technically when switching papers, printers, and/or inks your edition is no longer part of the same edition. Not to mention just substituting another paper, printer, or ink set your colors will shift.

The same rule of dependability and longevity apply when we choose printers and inks for our archival pigment giclee printing .  We have tested all the major manufacturers for scanning equipment and printers and have made our choice based on our own testing.  There is a lot of hype out there about different equipment and materials that we have proved and disproved in our own direct testing.  We know based on direct experience that our product is created with the very best equipment for digital fine art reproduction and digital fine art printmaking in general.