Father’s Day may have passed but that’s not stopping us from extending our 10% off special for another month! Order by July 20th and we’ll take 15% off of any order, from photos on canvas to picture retouching and restoration.

We can work from a digital camera image or take a digital capture of a old fashioned photo. Check out the artistic effects you can get, like pop art, photo colorization and more! Call 727-726-7411 to place your order.

Not sure if you photo will work? Feel free to call us at 727-726-7411 and we will discuss your options and help you find the solution that is just right for you!

Menaul Printing offers retouching, restoration and printing for memorial services. Our founder Scott Menaul has over 30 years of experience in photography, retouching, restoration and printing, and our facility is fully equipped to take digital captures of photos and print them on canvas or paper. We offer next-day turnaround on rush orders in Tampa Bay.

An example of a watercolor painting we reproduced with the giclee process.

All of the photo and art reproduction work we do ends up coming out of a giclée printer. But what makes that special? When it comes to photo and art printing, there is a world of difference between what you get out of Kinkos copiers and what you get when expertly trained giclée printers and art reproduction specialists using top of the line equipment. Learn what makes giclée printing different.

What is giclée?

Giclée (pronounced “zhee-clay“) is a method of producing high quality reproductions of artwork using special ink-jet printers.

The term “giclée” was coined in the 1990’s when the technology was first developed. It is derived from the French words for “nozzle” and “to spray.” Giclées have since become the standard for reproductions in museums and fine art galleries.

Why use giclées?

Giclées allow an artist to affordably produce on-demand artwork without the necessity of doing expensive print runs and keeping a large inventory.

The artist also has finer control over the colors, sizes and quality and can even choose from a variety of substrates such as canvas, paper, watercolor paper and even vinyl.

How do you make giclée prints?

If the original piece of art is a painting, drawing, collage, photograph, etc. then the first step is to get a digital copy.

Once we have a digital copy, we can use software like Photoshop to prep the piece for printing and make any changes or corrections.

Looking at the “before” picture, you can see one big problem—the tops of their heads are chopped off! With the goal being to print this photo on canvas, Scott Menaul (our founder and the resident Photoshop guru) set about making it worthy of hanging on the wall. Here’s what Scott wrote in his blog about this project:

In the original photo, you can see that the tops of their hats are cut off. Using Photoshop, I expanded the picture by extending the wall in the background and recreating their hats (that’s a pretty neat trick.) I also adjusted the colors to make up for fading.

Here’s another great group shot of the women with their friends. She asked that I remove the background (chain link fence, people walking by) so the image in the giclée on canvas would focus on them. Here is the before and after:

The photo had scratches on it that I was able to fix. You can see the corrections below:

If you have a box of old photos or even newspaper clippings or your kids’ childhood drawings, you should dust them off and have me restore and reproduce your favorites. You’re welcome to bring your stuff to my Clearwater, FL studio and we can go through it and figure out what you want to do. Call me at 727-726-7411 or message me online.

Just today I had a woman and her mother come pick up a reproduction of a family photo collage. The collage was made over 30 years ago, pieced together from more than 100 family photos from over the past century. The daughter was in town for a couple days and she wanted to get copies made since they weren’t sure how much longer the photos and the glue holding them together would last.

They had tried going to Kinkos to make copies but they were told the collage would have to be taken out of its glass frame and run through a rolling scanner, which would have wrecked the fragile photos. They came to me to see if I could reproduce it without taking it out from behind the glass that was helping hold it together.

As a photographer with my own studio and equipment, I had no problem shooting it through the glass and making digital copies. As a Photoshop expert, I was able to clean up the photos and get it ready for printing. And as a giclée printer I was able to handle the reproduction in-house and have the entire job done within 3 days. I also gave her it on CD.

If you have a photo you want restored and retouched, feel free to call us at 727-726-7411 and we’ll be happy to discuss the possibilities with you.

Our Clearwater, FL studio services the Tampa and St. Petersburg area including Largo, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, Palm Harbor and Oldsmar.

• Take a digital capture so we don’t have to alter the original.
• Fix fading and discoloration.
• Repair cracks, tears and creases.
• Clean up skin blemishes and wrinkles.

You can see an example of our photo restoration work on Scott’s blog:

» Photo Restoration of Family Heirloom

If you have any old photos you want restored or if you have any questions, contact us (the form is on the right side of the page) or call us at 727-726-7411. You can also become a fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.