Made to order,
built to outlast me.

Lumachrome

Face-mounted to TruLife acrylic

A layered transparency print, face-mounted to anti-reflective acrylic. The image is printed on clear film over a white reflective base, so light passes through the emulsion twice — inbound and outbound — before it reaches the eye.

The image is printed at 1200 ppi and 16-bit onto a transparency layer infused with iridium particles, which is then laid over a white polyester base. Incident light passes through the image layer, reflects off the white substrate, and passes through the image layer a second time on the way out. That double transit raises effective optical density and color saturation compared with a single-pass reflective print, where light interacts with the colorant only once. It is the same principle that makes a transparency on a lightbox outperform the same frame on paper.

Face-mounting bonds the print directly to the back of the acrylic with an optically clear, pH-neutral silicone adhesive. Removing the air gap eliminates two refractive-index boundaries that conventional glazing introduces, along with the secondary reflections and slight parallax between glazing and image that come with them.

The glazing is TruLife, an acrylic with a single-sided anti-reflective hard coat specified for face-mount applications. Mounted, its surface reflectance measures under 1.5%, against approximately 4% for uncoated acrylic — the Fresnel reflection of a bare air-to-acrylic interface — with total transmission above 98%. It blocks up to 99% of UV between 300 and 380 nm, and the coating is abrasion-resistant and anti-static. The assembly is backed rigid against bowing and finished with diamond-milled satin edges. The process carries a manufacturer rating in excess of 120 years.

Print

Lumachrome — iridium-infused transparency over a white polyester base, 16-bit at 1200 ppi

Glazing

⅛″ TruLife anti-reflective acrylic, hard-coated

Reflectance

Under 1.5% face-mounted (Tru Vue)

UV

Blocks up to 99% (300–380 nm)

Build

pH-neutral silicone bond, rigid backing, diamond-milled satin edges

Rated life

120+ years (manufacturer rating)

See how it's built →

Best for Deep color, dramatic light, anything you want to stop people in a hallway.

Chromaluxe

Dye-sublimation on aluminum

Under heat and pressure, the dye passes directly from solid to gas and diffuses into a polymer coating bonded to the panel. The image ends up within that coating rather than sitting on top of it.

In a conventional print the colorant sits in or on a receiving layer at the surface. Here the dye is gaseous at the point of transfer, diffuses into the panel's coating, and returns to a solid state inside it. There is no discrete ink film at the surface, which removes the failure modes that depend on one: scuffing, flaking, and delamination.

The practical consequences are durability ones. The panel is unaffected by water, humidity, and common household chemicals, and cleans with a damp cloth — it can hang in a kitchen or bathroom without special consideration. Wilhelm Imaging Research rates ChromaLuxe gloss white panels at 65 years on display, approximately three times the rating of archival silver-halide paper.

Optically, the white base coat beneath the image is reflective, so highlights return a high proportion of incident light and read as luminous rather than as printed white. The effect is most pronounced on high-key subjects — snow, water, and backlit cloud.

Process

Dye-sublimation — image infused into the panel coating

Substrate

0.045″ (1.14 mm) aluminum, gloss white base

Rated life

65 years on display (Wilhelm Imaging Research, gloss white)

Care

Damp cloth. Water-, chemical-, and scratch-resistant

See how it's built →

Best for Bright scenes, water, snow, big skies. Also the most durable option.

Supralume

High-gloss canvas on aluminum composite

Canvas with the gloss integral to the print rather than varnished on afterward, surface-bonded to an aluminum composite panel. It keeps canvas texture without the detail loss and reduced black density that matte canvas normally costs.

Matte and semi-gloss canvas scatter incident light at the surface. That diffusion lowers maximum black density and softens fine detail — the two things a woven substrate can least afford to lose. The conventional workaround is a gloss varnish sprayed over a matte print, but because that varnish is a discrete film sitting on a flexible, textured surface, it is prone to crazing along the weave as the canvas moves.

This is built differently. The gloss is a property of the print itself — an Ultra-Glossy HD coating applied in-process rather than a topcoat — printed with oil-based pigment inks on a wide-gamut press at 1200 ppi and 16-bit, the only configuration my lab runs at that resolution. It holds a high Dmax and is water-resistant, with no separate surface layer that can craze, lift, or yellow.

It is then surface-bonded to DiBond aluminum composite rather than stretched over a wooden frame. Stretched canvas is held under continuous tension and slackens over time; a bonded panel has no tension to lose. No sag, no corner distortion, and nothing to re-tension later.

Print

16-bit, 1200 ppi, oil-based pigment ink

Surface

Ultra-Glossy HD — coated in-print, not varnished over

Mount

Surface-bonded to DiBond aluminum composite

Care

Water-resistant; will not crack or yellow like sprayed varnish

Best for Texture and detail — rock, bark, forest, anything intricate.

Fine Art Paper

Canson Infinity Rag Photographique, 310 gsm cotton

A 310 gsm, 100% cotton rag with a smooth matte surface and no optical brighteners. The most traditional of the four, and the only one I sign by hand before it ships.

The stock is Canson Infinity Rag Photographique 310: a 100% cotton rag, internally buffered and acid-free, with no optical brightening agents. OBAs are fluorescent additives that make a paper read whiter under UV, and they degrade — a print on brightened stock drifts warmer and loses apparent contrast as they break down. An OBA-free base has no such component to lose. Its whitepoint decades from now is close to the whitepoint it shipped with.

The surface is a smooth matte rather than a gloss or baryta coating, and that is a deliberate trade rather than a compromise. Matte cotton scatters more incident light than a baryta surface and so reaches a lower maximum black density; in exchange it holds a longer tonal ramp through the midtones and carries no specular sheen competing with the image. It rewards work where tonal separation matters more than absolute Dmax.

It meets the ISO 9706 standard for permanence and is rated by the manufacturer at 50 to 80 years under gallery lighting with pigment inks. That figure describes the print, not the installation: cumulative light exposure and contact with acidic materials are what actually govern how a paper print ages. Specify UV-filtering glazing and a cotton rag mat, and it will outlast the person who framed it.

Stock

Canson Infinity Rag Photographique 310

Weight

310 gsm, 100% cotton rag

Surface

Smooth matte, natural white base

Brighteners

None — OBA-free

Rated life

50–80 years under gallery lighting (manufacturer rating, ISO 9706)

Delivery

Unframed, hand-signed before shipping

Best for Quieter work, black and white, and anyone with a framer they trust.