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Help & Info
Can you:
  • Change the color?
  • Contrast?
  • Crop a piece?
  • Change its orientation?
Yes! Just contact us. We'll customize the art so it meets your needs precisely.

FAQs


Here are some of the questions we've been hearing a lot lately:
  • What are your capabilities for making sustainable, earth friendly prints?
  • Do you have recycled paper or canvas?
  • Do you have soy inks, or low VOC inks?

You might have surmised from our name that we, the principals of Cloud Watchers, have been green, Green, GREEN since we were pups. Moving more toward that direction is natural and a pleasure for us.

Here are some examples of the things we do and use to make that happen:
1)    Epson UltraChrome aqueous inks which have No Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).
2)    Stylus Pro printers which meet the energy consumption guidelines set by the European Commission and have been endorsed by ENERGY STAR.
3)    Renewable resource cotton media… watercolor paper and canvas. These comprise recyclable and biodegradable substrates.
4)    Inks combined with media that result in a finished product that is certifiably green.
5)    Advanced optimization algorithms which calculate how to best cut our stretcher bars and reduce wasted wood by a factor of about ten.
6)    Nesting algorithms plus job design methods that reduce media waste to near zero.
7)    Recycled, re-purposed boxes and packing materials.
8)    Reconfigurable, multipurpose facilities that reduce the amount of space, heating and cooling used to make the Giclées.

Prompted by one of our client’s questions about SOY and Green Inks, we did some research. We found that the color range of the inks was significantly narrower than the No VOC inks we use. The downside of our No VOC inks, though, is that the substrates and inks together cost about twice as much as the Soy and low VOC solvent combinations. We overcome this cost differential somewhat by keeping our overhead low and by using some advanced materials optimization techniques. Still, we are open to moving toward Soy or low VOC methods as appropriate.

Clearly, we can't stop here either. We're raising our heads up to see what else we can do to help protect our environment. You might want to check out a book (available in Green down-loadable form at this link), titled "Graphics Gone Green: Ways to Go Green Without Losing Your Shirt", by Rita Amladi and Erica Aitken. It's a fun and informative read.

Clearly, moving toward green isn’t all about social or environmental altruism and good citizenship; it makes good business sense too, because reducing waste, keeping noxious fumes out of the air, reducing energy bills cuts costs, boosts the value of what we do for you and helps keep all of us healthy.