James Balog speaks in Copenhagen

Photographer and long time Photo Craft client, James Balog, is speaking at the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen on his Extreme Ice Survey's ongoing photographic documentation of climate change effects on glacial melt.

Read more at the following link.

http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=dabc4054cea8007a75b7fe20c&id=6a607ddca9&e=5e93fd0871

For more information on the Extreme Ice Survey and to see some awesome video footage click the following link

Extreme Ice Survey Web Site

Photo Craft Imaging / Boulder Digital Arts Party

Photo Craft Imaging (parent company of GrafXGroup) joined forces with Boulder Digital Arts to celebrate BDA's 5th anniversary and Photo Craft's 35th anniversary plus we wanted to break in our new space at 2901 55th St in Boulder.
We got a bit of a write up by the Boulder Reporter including a video. Check it out via the link below:
http://boulderreporter.com/2009/10/digital-artists-and-friends-get-wild-at-bdas-5th-birthday/

Nice artical about GrafXGroup and Photo Craft Imaging in the Boulder County Business Report

Photo Craft eyes bigger picture with GrafX
By Clayton Moore
September 18, 2009 -- The paint is barely dry on Photo Craft Imaging's brand-new headquarters, but the ink is already flowing at the graphics manufacturer. Armed with better facilities, the company is meeting the new needs of the digital age by diversifying its products and streamlining its processes via a new division, the GrafX Group.
Read the whole article. Click on the link below or copy and paste into your browser
http://bcbr.com/article.asp?id=102156

Visitor Center Lobby Graphics Project for Grand River Dam Authority

-- Click on any image to view larger and slower --

Kearstin Cowan was the GrafXGroup project manager on this production. Here's what she has to say, "Starting in January of 2009, I had the pleasure of meeting with Lee Buchsbaum of LMB Industrial Photography who was contracted by the Grand River Dam Authority to photograph, design and provide graphics for the visitor center lobby of one of their power plants. The lobby needed a face lift so Lee contacted us, PCI GrafXGroup, to help him orchestrate the production and installation."

"Lee came to us with his design ideas and we discussed all possible options to make his project a success. We worked with him for months narrowing down the ideas for the final design which consisted of seven large panels ranging from 48” x 84” up to 120” x 84”. We used metal frames, light weight substrates and standoff plexi-glass pieces for a modern, 3-dimensional look."

"After producing the graphic panels in our facility in Boulder, Colorado, we dismantled them and on September 18th we drove them to the plant east of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to personally handle the installation. The visitor center lobby was located on the fourth floor of the facility. Due to the size of the panels there was no elevator or stairway that would accommodate bringing them to the fourth floor so we lashed them onto a trailer and hauled them up by crane. From then on the installation was fairly straight forward. The finished display will educate visitors to the area about the Grand River Dam Authority."

For more information on the Grand River Dam Authority see: www.grda.com/

Book Project - 50th Reunion of the Class of 1959, East High School, Denver, Colorado

This project involved producing 275 copies of a 190 page book with a custom designed hard cover. The client designed the interior book block and submitted it as a PDF. We worked closely with the client and after several iterations, the 190 page book block, which included full Color as well as Black and White photographic images along with text and graphics was printed on our Xerox digital press. The hard cover art was printed on an HP inkjet printer and assembled on site using FastBind and ExactBind equipment.

We are in and running at 2901 55th St.

The move to 55th St. in Boulder is complete. Come on by!



The new facility is 50% larger than our old facility on Arapahoe Ave. We are expanding our digital press offerings and have already installed a new hard cover binding machine for doing hard cover books up to 12x12 inches. Two large bay doors at the back of the building will allow us to drive even large vehicles inside to complete vehicle wraps. We have expanded our custom framing department as well as our mounting and laminating/finishing area. Come on by for a tour of the new Photo Craft Imaging facility home of the GrafXgroup, Rosario Custom framing and the PC Digital Press.

Trip down memory lane with Roddy MacInnes

As Photo Craft Imaging, the GrafXGroup, Rossario Custom Framing and PC Digital Press continue the move into our new location at 2901 55th St in Boulder, our good friend and photographer, Roddy MacInnes, takes us on a trip down memory lane from the time when he worked at Photo Craft. I'd love to say that these pictures were not taken too long ago but ...........

Check it out on Roddy's Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019345&id=1273154499

The move to 55th St continues

Here's a picture of the front of our new facility at 2901 55th St in boulder. We've been working on it for several months and all of the production for Photo Craft Imaging and the GrafXGroup has been moved over. Soon we will move Rossario Custom Framing and the Photo Craft Digital Press operations along with our customer service, sales and administration staff. By July 20th we hope to have all operations at the new location. It's exciting. The new space is really open lending itself flexible productions. We also have two bays with truck high doors so we can do vehicle wraps inside. The current plan is to greatly expand the vehicle wrap, digital press and on-demand book production areas of our business. Below are some pictures of the prodcution area.

The processor end of the LightJet 430. This is the only photo printing process that we moved to the new location. Sorry to say we have processed our last roll of E6 slide film. We still have C41 color negative processing, black & white film processing and photo printing through our partner company Boulder Pro Photo. We are also servicing E6 slide shooters by taking film down to Reed Photo in Denver three times a week.

All the digi designers and front end prodcution is located here.

The mounting and lamination area is super. We have lots of room to move things around. This flexi space is going to make complex and multiple projects do-able. 2500 square feet devoted just to finishing.

More on window graphics

Seems like window graphics are the current craze. It is a great way to increase visibility and add an artistic look to your building. Our biggest user over the past year has been Sunflower Farmers Markets. Sunflower uses both indoor and outdoor graphics to raise the excitement of their new brand of grocery stores. They use solid PSA vinyl on windows where they want to hide what's behind the window and window perf (perferated vinyl, has lots of little holes in it) where they want you to see a big picture on the outside but from the inside it just looks like you are looking through the window; you can't see that there is anything on the window at all. Check out the pics below for some Sunflower window instalations:

Newton Running window graphics

A recent project was to help Newton Running become more visible in their new World Headquarters location in Boulder, Colorado. Newton Running makes custom orthopedics for athletes using highly sophisticated measuring and digital technology. At the Running Lab in Boulder, they can literally make a custom fitting athletic shoe while you wait. Their new home is located in the lower level (basement) of a building in downtown Boulder, which has very little exterior exposure. They do, however, have a nice glass entrance way leading immediately to the stairs going down to their facility.

The idea was to create a spectacular, highly artistic graphic covering the entire glassed entrance way, but not to reduce the amount of natural light coming in as that was their only exterior window. The other problem was that the windows to cover, faced south and west with no protection from the elements. In Colorado at 5000+ feet altitude that is a real problem when it comes to preventing graphics from fading.

We used a perforated vinyl that allowed the graphic to be viewed clearly from the outside but from the inside you could see nothing. It just looked like a window. The 65/35 ratio of vinyl to holes resulted in very little light loss and with all the windows covered the perception from inside was like nothing was there at all. For added protection from the elements we covered the graphic with a 3mil thick UV inhibitor incorporated laminate. Below are a couple more shots; one closer up and one taken during the installation of the window graphics.



Learn more about Newton Running at http://newtonrunning.com/

Welcome to the PCI GrafXGroup Blog

PCI GrafXGroup is the design, production management, and installation team formed by Photo Craft Imaging in 2005 to focus on new and expanding technologies for large format digital printing. We grew out of Photo Craft Imaging (hence PCI), which grew from Photo Craft Laboratories, which started in 1974 as a custom photo processing lab. We became involved in digital imaging in 1989 with scanning and slide services. By 1991 we had installed one of the earliest wide format direct digital printers in the country allowing us to print directly from digital files to paper 50 inches wide by virtually any length. From those early frontier days of digital imaging we have added design and installation services to create a one-stop shop for those looking for trade show booths and graphics, banners and banner stands, creative interior displays, high quality photographic art prints and giclee, custom framing and display hardware, and so much more. Recently, GrafXGroup installed the first of what we hope to be several new digital presses for doing on-demand books and greeting cards as well as full color flyers, brochures, postcards, business cards and other commercial printing. Digital presses are taking over from the offset presses for short run, fast turnaround and small volume printing jobs. Combined with extremely high quality makes these types of printing presses ideal for the type of work and customers GrafXGroup seeks to cultivate.

In this blog we hope to highlight new advances in services and products; maybe stimulate your imagination when it comes time for your next graphics intensive project whether that be a banner stand for a weekend seminar, a pop up trade show booth, an advertising campaign at the airport needing large backlit transparencies, or just something simple like covering an entire building.