IMAGE
CAPTURE / PHOTO STUDIODIGITAL
AND PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES TO ANY SIZEFINE
ART "GICLEE" PRINTSINDOOR
/ OUTDOOR BANNERSSIGNAGETRADESHOW
GRAPHICSVEHICLE
GRAPHICSPORTABLE
DISPLAYS AND EXHIBITSMOUNTING
AND FINISHINGFULFILLMENT
SERVICESINSTALLATIONGRAPHIC
DESIGN AND PRODUCTIONPRE
PRESS PROOFSOFFSET
PRINTING - SHEET / WEB / DIGITALCUSTOM
BOOK PUBLISHING & OTHER VISUAL FANTASIES
PRESS
ROOM
A Company of High Tech Images
By Penny Singer
The New York Times www.nytimes.com
When reproductions of paintings were needed for
an exhibition at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow,
the task was given to Color Group Imaging Labs in
Hawthorne.
The company reproduced 3 1⁄2-by-7-foot, double-panel
displays of paintings from the late 1600’s
to the early 1700’s from 4-by-5 transparencies
for the exhibition called “Cross Roads and
Cross Rivers: Diversity in Colonial New York.”
Marc Weinstein, president of Color Group, said museum
curators are especially sensitive to color, light
and form. “They require a lot of very painstaking
work but, coming from a fine arts background, I
get a lot of satisfaction when I see a museum project
of ours on display,” he said.
Kate
Johnson, curator for Historic Hudson Valley, which operates
six landmark properties, including Philipsburg Manor,
said: “We have worked with Color Group for many
years. They are very experienced in using state-of-the-art
equipment. Their high-resolution scanning, 4-by-5 color
transparencies and slides of the paintings have helped
make this an exceptional exhibition, which has drawn attention
from historians and archaeologists around the country.”
The
exhibition, the largest ever displayed at Philipsburg,
Ms. Johnson said, not only depicts the early commercial
history of the United States but also the cultural diversity
of the people brought together by various business ventures
of the Philipse family.
“It’s the double stamp of commerce and cultural
diversity that has marked New York from the very beginning,”
Ms. Johnson said. “We borrowed paintings and prints
showing various groups in pursuit of trade from collections
throughout the United States and Canada.”
And in the spirit of the Philipse family, Ms. Johnson
observed that the task of reproducing the paintings for
the exhibition was given to a local concern. “In
its day the manor of Philipsburg was an important commercial
center.” she continued. “According to historians,
both Frederick Philipse and his son Adolph made a point
of using local suppliers and artisans in their business
ventures.”
Mr. Weinstein said museum clients are only part of the
mix of his business. “Our customers run the gamut
from professional photographers, artists and illustrators
to teenagers who want larger-than-life posters on the
spot,” he said, “to companies with names like
International Business Machines, Philip Morris, Reader’s
Digest and Lillian Vernon. Walk-in trade is tremendous.
At least 200 people a day use the equipment we have in
our ‘while you wait’ lobby.”
The lobby lab, staffed by four technicians who offer advice
and guidance to customers for making things like view
graphs, laser copies, photograhic prints from negatives
or transparencies to to 8 by 20 inches or as large as
2 by 3 feet. Additional equipment in the lobby allows
customers to enlarge, reduce and crop their images on
the computer. Customers create stylized prints, calendars
layouts, magazine covers and prints to fit wallets, either
3 by 5 inches or 5 x 7 inches.
Color Group, which Mr. Weinstein said is the largest concern
of its kind in Westchester, dates back to 1946 when it
was called Reuben’s Studio of Color, a two-man photo
studio in Brooklyn. In 1969 it was bought by Mr. Weinstein’s
father, Sam Weinstein, a commercial photographer, who
moved his company to Hawthorne.
“I bought my dad out in 1988 when he retired,”
Mr. Weinstein said. “He flunked retirement and now
is back into business. He owns a one-hour photo studio.
I learned the business from him, working in the lab during
high school and college. I still remember listening to
the Watergate hearings in the dark room.”
Mr. Weinstein, 47, a graduate of Pratt Institute with
a degree in fine arts, began his career as a freelance
photographer. “Basically, we’re still doing
the same thing: providing a broad base of clients with
processing, custom printing in color and black and white,
enlargements and photographic services, but the electronic
equipment we use is vastly different from my dad’s
tools of the trade,” he said.
Digital photography now accounts for 50 percent of the
company’s business. “Our rapid growth over
the last 10 years depended a lot on digital imaging,”
Mr. Weinstein said. “That is the use of computers
to scan photos and create large reproductions with amazing
fidelity.” With the IRIS system, which Color Group
uses, art reproductions can be checked for accuracy before
going to press, resulting in a saving of time and money
in the production of art books and limited editions.
“Digital has now taken over all commercial jobs
such as trade show work and design compositions,”
Mr. Weinstein said, adding that he expects strong growth
in the digital imaging sector of his business, which is
expected to post sales of $2.3 million this year.
State-of-the-art electronic equipment requires a large
capital investment. A giant color copier, for instance,
costs $250,000, and Mr. Weinstein’s rule of thumb
is that each new piece of equipment must return its purchase
price within a year.
“If it doesn’t pan out that way, we’ve
made a bad buy,” he said, adding that the industry
has changed so much and so rapidly that “oldtimers
wouldn’t recognize it.”
“In their day,” he said, “they depended
on chemistry, placing pictures in the developer, hanging
them out to dry, maybe retouching with an airbrush. The
airbrush is extinct. The only thing that remains the same
is the styling. The shot is always set up to show the
subject to the best advantage. Everything else in the
industry has changed, but the quality is higher than ever.”
The ability to clone pictures and paintings has expanded
the consumer market. “We can now faithfully reproduce
and resore treasured family portraits,” Mr. Weinstein
said. “We can even reproduce on canvas so that every
member of the family can have a copy of what looks like
the original painting. For example, at Christmas we did
a 1960’s pastel of a little boy. The son’s
wife always admired it so his parents gave her the copy.”
The company still occupies its site in Hawthorne, but
the space has tripled to accommodate the expanding business.
“We have 24 people, a very good group,” Mr.
Weinstein said. “What’s hard is finding people
for the dark room. Everybody wants to work on computers.”
Color Group Crosses the Digital Horizon
By Rich Handley
Imaging Business Magazine
When Marc Weinstein went to work for his father more than
20 years ago, he could not have predicted how different
their family-run photo lab would become in time. Back
then, Color Group Inc. of Hawthorne, NY, made its profit–as
photo labs everywhere did at the time–on film processing
and enlargement. Bulky, clunky, equipment lined the place,
and the concept of an all-digital photo lab that worked
without film seemed a crazy idea to anyone of sound mind.
Color Group traces its roots back to 1946, when the original
owner built a three person lab in his basement. "My
dad bought it from another fellow who started it after
WWll," recalls Weinstein. "My dad was a photographer
after the war, and he bought the lab in 1969. Then I came
along in 1982. I was a photographer in New York City for
10 or 12 years, and I decided to try working with my dad,
which worked out okay".
These days, Weinstein is Color Group's President, leading
a digital lab that handles all phases of the visual, photographic,
and graphic arts. The company contains a drive-in photo/video
studio available for rental on a per-diem basis, which
spans 2,000 square feet, has 22' high ceilings and incorporates
a corner cyclorama measuring 29' L x 25' W x 17' H. Recently,
Weinstein completed a renovation on the entire lab, installing
two new Mediaphot/Colenta processors and two ZBE 50-inch
printers to his cache of equipment.
Throughout its existence, Color Group has provided a variety
of services. "We did all kinds of work over the years,
stuff that doesn't exist anymore, like slide shows,"
says Weinstein. "Now, we're into outdoor graphics
and digital C-prints." Their major clients include
large corporations, trade shows, department store, chains,
malls, restaurant franchises, clothing retailers and the
cosmetics industry. In addition, they also cater to what
Weinstein deems "quite an active street trade."
When It's Time To Change
Unfortunately, the 1990's proved very difficult for Weinstein
and his staff, threatening the survival of the second
generation family business. As film development and enlargement
gave way to the digital arena–with personal computers
eliminating even more business by promoting an "I
can do it myself" approach–many labs exposed
their last frames. In the end, Color Group was one of
the lucky ones to make it through the dry times.
Weinsein attributes Color Group's survival to his staff's
determination to adapt to changing times by learning new
skills and purchasing new equipment. "We decided
it was time to renovate the business and get everything
up to snuff," he explains. Since the minilab had
been slowly going digital for years anyway, it was a feasible
task. "We had enough work in different parts of the
business, so we decided to clean up the mess."
Before the renovation, Weinstein owned one digital ZBE
Chromira photo printer and a Kreonite model. Recognizing
that the digital C-print business was getting very busy,
he bought another Chromira and two processors, which proved
to be a great boon to the business. "Scheduling was
always a problem, he says, "but the second machine
alleviated the whole issue."
Realizing the same scheduling problems would would exist
for the lab's Kodak Duratrans, and for regular paper,
Color Group pulled out its entire black-and-white department
and put in a second Mediaphot/Colenta for processing 50-inch
material. The difference was immediately noticeable. "Now,
when doing a couple hundred or a thousand Duratrans, it
doesn't get in the way of our glossy and matte C-print
work, because the C-print work goes on one processor and
the Duratrans, at a different speed, on the other procesor."
This alllowed Weinstein, an artist who attended RIT and
the Pratt Institute to transform Color Group into what
he calls "a kind of art-related business." The
company now provides fine-art printing, giclee printing,
book production and prepress work, something that would
not have been viable during his father's time at the helm.
"In the past ten years or so, we've done about, I
quess, five to eight full-blown-out books–we have
printers print them, then binding and publishing."
The last book Color Group produced–and certainly
one of the most fascinating-was Michael Stadther's A Treasure
Trove (www.atreasuretrove.com).
This gentleman wrote a book, illustrated it, had a million
dollars worth of jewels commissioned, then hid tokens
around the country," Weinstein explains. "The
book had all these clues in it. You'd figure out the clues
in the book, you'd go to the location, you'd find the
tokens and you'd get the treasure. The book got a lot
of publicity from media all around the country."
The digital revolution has been kind to Weinstein's Color
Group, reducing equipment needs, labor costs and job completion
times. "The first itme I got into digital was 1984,"
he recalls, "when the slide imaging business went
digital. That worked well for quite a long time."
Still, for every clichéd silver lining, there's
a proverbial cloud, and digital imaging has had its own
share of downpours.
The biggest problem for Weinstein was the obsolescence
of 20 years' worth of existing film equipment. "All
those years, you're on the cutting edge of stuff where
you don't know if it's going to work or not work, and
you try it out the hard way. By the time you start making
money with it, the price drops and what you have is worthless
and you're on to the next piece of equipment, which you
have to buy again." When Color Group made the transition
from totally film-based to primarily digital, he says,
the hardest thing to do was figuring out what to do with
all his old enlargers. Weinstein called several colleges,
hoping one might want his obsolete equipment. Eventually,
a client who was processing 8"x10" film and
attending Hunter College in New York City happily arranged
for Hunter to accept much of the machinery for it's students.
"Whatever they didn't take," Weinstein says,
"I gave to my kids' high school." Although he
ultimately threw out half a million dollars' worth of
computer equipment–enough to fill two dumpsters–he
was glad someone was getting to use and learn from the
film enlargers he'd used thoughout his career.
Weinstein says he has always considered digital imaging
a positve step in the evolution of printing and photography,
waving off nay-sayers who thought it would be the death
of film. "To this day, we still process film,"
he points out, estimating that film now takes up less
than 10 percent of his business. We don't do as much as
we did, but I have a feeling that there will always be
some film processing as long as there is film to process."
Most of his lab's work these days is for cosmetics firms,
or for archiving purposes for individuals, companies and
libraries. Scanning, he says, is still a very big business,
despite the high level of attrition.
"Frozen food didn't kill home cooking, and restaurants
aren't going out of business," he jokes, "and
video did not kill the radio star. As long as you're a
good shop and have a service to sell and there's value
to what you do, people will want to pay for it. Those
are the people you're there for." The secret to Color
Group's success when so many others have failed to make
the transition? "We've survived because we're smart
and have worked hard at it. You have to adapt–you
have to keep figuring out what's the next thing over the
horizon."
Art + Technology = Quality Control
ArtsNews Feature
Artists who are riding the wave of new technology are
discovering it gives them greater control over their art,
more options, finer quality and a host of new conveniences.
Artist Marc Weinstein, President of Color Group, a full
service photo and imaging lab in Hawthorne, is most excited
about how new technologies are enabling artists to duplicate
their work. “In the old days we worked with artists
to reproduce their work,” says Weinstein. “Now
the quality of printing and imaging is so improved, that
we have gone beyond just reproducing to nearly replicating
art work. And, in many cases, incorporating the process
as part of the original work.”
Weinstein, a graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York,
was trained as a photographer and printmaker. His business
— helping artists and businesses produce their work
give him little time for his own art. “Shoemakers
don’t have shoes,” he says.
According to Weinstein, the new accessibility of digital
technology is the major factor in providing artist with
more control and more options. Typically the use of digital
involves scanning a print into the computer or sending
it to the computer directly with a digital camera. Artists
are using these new tools in many ways. Some are creating
images directly on the computer, whereas others are scanning
in their original photography or prints and altering them
digitally. Many artist make prints from digital work and
then hand draw or paint over the computer image to complete
the work.“
Because of the new software like PhotoShop, customers
can now do filters, blurs, retouching and lighting themselves,”
he says. “Few of them could do it in the old days
and those who did had to do it by hand. The possibilities
with PhotoShop are almost endless. you could spend years
perfecting the use of all the tools on that program,”
says Weinstein.
A visit behind the scenes at Color Group provides an education
in the imaging business. There are separate spaces for
photo labs, computers, printers and various work stations.
One room the size of a small gymnasium is used just for
photographing large objects such as cars. Special fluorescent
lighting throughout the building is set to replicate daylight
between the hours of 11 A.M. to 1 P.M., the standard for
the photography industry.
Color Group provides access to cutting edge equipment
that is too expensive for the average a artist to own.
For example, one of the digital cameras at the lab, which
makes very large files and can print almost any size work
costs about $20,000.
The “IRIS,” a very fine high-resolution inkjet
printer, is often used to make fine art replications.
It can print on almost any kind of surface including canvas,
watercolor and fine art paper. IRIS permits artists to
print on paper sizes as large as 33"x 44". The
IRIS prints with a resolution of ‘800 dpi’
or ‘dots per inch.’
Its ability to print large scale works has brought some
unique projects to Color Group. One customer owned an
original map of Paris that was printed in 1739. The problem
in replicating it was size — 9 feet x 12 feet. Until
recently, printing presses did not have the capacity to
print such large sizes. Weinstein surmises that the map
was painstakingly printed in sections and then glued together
on a large piece of canvas. Color Group’s assignment
was to replicate the map and then make four 3 x 8 sections
for window blinds at the customer’s home in Hawaii.
Not only did the large-scale scanners and printers enable
him to do the work, but he was able to digitally re-touch
the map and clean it up. Weinstein recalls how one customer
was faced with a dilemma when her father, a painter, has
passed away. She and her sister both wanted the paints
he had left behind. Using the IRIS printer at Color Group,
they were able to replicate and share his pieces.
By storing their work on computer disks, artists can also
save money. Weinstein notes that before the advent of
computer storage, artists would have to make numerous
prints from a negative. “The prep time that went
into making the first print was expensive so it was cost
effective to print 150 to 200 editions at once,”
he says. “The problem for the artist is that they
had paid for all these editions and they would be stuck
with them until they could sell them to a gallery. Now
they can fine tune the work and make five prints to send
to the gallery, burn the image on a CD and come back and
make more prints when they want.”
When asked about the difficulty that some artists may
have with new technology, Weinstein compares it to moving
from one traditional medium into another. “You have
to learn a whole new language and a new set of skills,”
he says. “Its like a painter becoming a printmaker.
He knows the basics. He knows color, form and shape. But
now he has to acquire new tools.” For those who
are willing to try it, Weinstein sees many rewards. “The
products are getting faster and the quality is going up,”
he says.
Your
Source For All Visual Services
DIGITAL
AND PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES TO ANY SIZE