Why does this stuff cost so much?

It's true, if you go online and search around at our competitors' websites, you can find some of the same images at a lower price. What makes us different is our printing and mounting methods. I've personally looked at many framed images from others websites and seen their quality. Lets start with printing....

Inks
In many cases, sellers go out with an image and get it printed at a copy shop (assuming they are not getting their product directly from China), tape it inside a frame behind glass and throw it on their site or store for a low price. Looking at these images first off, you will see that they look alright. However, a print shop primarily makes posters and banners etc, which aren't meant to last longer than a few weeks or months. A print shop typically uses dye inks which, yes, have strong color but which aren't made to maintain their vibrancy through the years. We, on the other hand, use pigmented inks which are more expensive because they are designed to maintain their color for years longer in a proper archival environment. Besides using pigmented inks, our printer uses 8 different color cartridges which means that the color of our reproductions is more precise and vivid. A print shop typically uses 4 different color cartridges which means less color accuracy. Remember, print shops make their money in banners and fliers, not Fine Art Printing. Why should they invest the headache and cost into a Fine Art Printing Machine as we have? Please don't take this as "bad mouthing" print shops. There might be a few out there who have the capacity for Fine Art Printing. However, most that I have seen are not equipped to do this for understandable business reasons.
The bottom line on our printing and "theirs"? We print to last, they don't.

Media

Now let's talk about the paper we use. If you go to a print shop, they typically offer 3 different media for you to print on: 1-PhotoGloss Paper 2- PhotoMat Paper 3- Linen (occasionally canvas). Well, for printing photographs, this may not sound so bad. We can easily print on photo paper with, as we have already discussed, even more color permanency and accuracy. When I first started my printing research for Restored Traditions over a year ago, I thought Photo Paper was the way to go. However, after printing on it for some time, it dawned on me that we weren't selling photographs but reproductions of Fine Catholic Art. Thus the search began for the perfect media to print on that would have the color vibrancy of photo paper yet would not have that Photo Paper look. I experimented with linen, classic laid, presentation paper, various "high definition" papers, vellum, rag, transfer papers, canvas, silk and the litany goes on. After a few hundred dollars of ink and paper, a room full of the same image on different media all labeled, I sat down with the other employees here to judge the winner. We decided on picture rag. Not only is this media archival and acid free (with a high price-tag), but it has an excellent balance between ink absorption and vibrancy while still having a clean mat finish.
Bottom line on our Media compared to theirs? It's made to last and look better, theirs isn't.

Mounting

Now mounting is one of my favorites because this is one of the biggest catches on quality. I am not trying to put anyone down, but I have had to let out multiple laughs when studying how many folks mount their images. I have wondered how they can afford to let mounted images out their door for, lets say, fifty bucks. In many cases, these people haven't even mounted the images themselves. They have bought a bunch of them from China or Mexico for 10 bucks a piece and re-listed them at fifty. If they have mounted them themselves, they have often used scotch or duct tape to hold them in to a frame that was made by the lowest bidder. If you're lucky, they even put it behind some poorly cleaned glass. We, on the other hand, start out with solid wood frames that are made in the USA. They are designed to last and not evaporate after being exposed to sunlight for more than five minutes. We then take your image and dry mount it to a piece of acid free foam board. Basically, a piece of heat-activated adhesive paper goes in between the image and foam board, a protective piece of paper goes on top of the image, and the whole thing gets put into this flat metal press that is 250 degrees F for 30-45 seconds. The press squeezes all the air out from between the image and foam board while also adhering the image to the board. This prevents the image from slipping over time and also prevents air bubbles from developing behind the image after a number of years. Sure, scotch tape works well at first, but dry-mounting is the archival method used to make an image last so you can give it to your grandchildren in the same condition we gave it to you. Scotch tape won't make it to your grandchildren. After the image is securely mounted, we cut a piece of Mat board in proportion to the image size. Mat board is good because not only does it put more artistic emphasis on the Art, but it also stops the image from coming into contact with the glass. When restoring old prints, I have had to be extra careful sometimes when extracting them from the frame. What happens is that the image can start bonding with the glass after a long time. This happens because of moisture build up inside the glass. The paper can start sticking to the glass after getting a little moist and re drying over years and years. The ink from the paper can start to bleed in some cases. However, if there had been an acid free mat in place, the image would have never touched the glass and it would have lasted longer in better condition. Another reason we mat everything we sell is because of image size. For example, when Bouguereau painted "Innocence" (the popular one with the woman walking through the forest with the Child and Lamb), he wasn't thinking that he had to paint it in perfect proportions of 8x10, 11x14, or 17x22. He just painted it long and narrow. When I take this image in Photoshop to proportionally re size it to a smaller or larger frame size, I have two choices: 1 - Crop out almost half of the image to make it fit in the frame or 2 - Change its size proportionately and make up for the gaps by cutting a custom mat to its new size. I have seen #1 done and nightmares of butchering Bouguereau's masterpiece have ensued. This is why I decided we would custom mat everything we sell, so you can get the whole image instead of a cropped one. Finally on mounting, we don't use regular glass but Acrylic UV Non-Glare (exception on this would be some of our Antique prints we restore and sell in their original frames and glass or some of the smaller specials we sell). This glass is dramatically more expensive than regular glass but the perks are that it won't break in transit and that you won't see your face in the glass when looking at the image. It also filters out the vast majority of Ultra-Violet radiation which means that those precious pigmented inks won't be fading anytime soon. When all of this is put together, we use a Framer's stapler gun to secure the foam board in the frame, install a black paper dust cover on the back and add on wire hanging system. Now it is all ready to ship out.

Bottom line on our mounting process compared to theirs: we make it to last, they don't.

Conclusion I am not trying to belittle the competition or say that everyone else does a poor job. I am just trying to give you the fruit of what I have seen a lot of other people in this field do. We, at Restored Traditions, refuse to sell poor quality products. There might be some other people out there who do just as good as us if not better. God Bless them.

Bottom line on all of this is that you get what you pay for.