[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

Have you investigated metallic prints, or prints on the back of acrylic ? These both have much more dynamic range than conventional prints on paper.

At first I thought you meant metal prints, but I think you're talking about prints on metallic paper. I'd forgotten about those. I had some stuff printed on metallic paper before I was ever into astrophotography and it came out really well. I imagine you'd still need to put it behind glass to protect it though, which would lead me down the expensive museum-glass route again.

I haven't tried acrylic at all yet. I'll have a look into that.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Originally Posted by Atmos

I’ve used Print2Metal and been crappy with the results.

I get a bit of printing done for competitions through Harvey Norman as long as you don’t go for same day printing.

Matt printing is better than Gloss for astro but you can print onto metallic paper which really helps with making them pop. The only galaxy I’ve had printed was the LMC but that took up a lot of the frame. I think what let’s galacies down is a lot of black around the main subject.

Hmm, ok, thanks Colin... seems like there's mixed reviews with P2M then. As you say, galaxies can be difficult because the amount of black around them but also because it seems to be hard to retain the subtle shadow detail in prints.

Originally Posted by Slawomir

Acrylic, especially thick one is great but large prints are heavy. I actually like the two large prints I’ve got from print2metal - but definitely agree that saturation and brightness need to be increased for printing (non luminescent medium vs a bright screen) and it is vital to get lighting that properly illuminates the prints as they really come alive with proper illumination. I have also done 2 on canvas in different shops and I’m not particularly fond of texture that comes with printing on canvas.

Thanks Suavi. Yeah, I think you're right about lighting. I think most of these mediums would work well if you were displaying it in an environment designed to show them off, but it's a bit tricky to get that ideal situation in a living room with lights and windows everywhere, so my thoughts have been around trying to mitigate that with medium selection.