Jamie Brown

Merry Christmas!! Yes, actually, I hear quite often how amazing it turned out and how it nearly captures the breath of people as they walk into the school to see. Many of the teachers say, out of the entire new school, this mural is their favorite part of it! Humbling to hear, but makes my heart so happy to know it turned out and brings joy to others to see! Thanks for checking in and for holding my hand during the process. Wishing you & yours happy holidays!

There is one slight "seam" in the middle between panels 3 and 4, but the rest is "seamless" they butted up the panels and overlapped them perfectly to make it look like one solid piece.. except that one section is slightly misaligned and you can see an obvious vertical line. Not sure if the installers will attempt to correct or if that's as good as it can be. I'll let the school deal with that, as it's not my call.

So, I heard on Saturday that Architexture's crew were at the new school installing the panels so I drove over as they were just finishing up and got to preview it! I think it looks amazing!! I'm so impressed with the over all color, it's brighter than I thought. (Based on the sample print I saw it looked like it would be darker and drab, pleased to see its actually brighter and more colorful in person!) The wheat actually matches really well with the paint color on walls as you can see! I think the effect they were going for, which is a window through the wall to the view of our Blue Mountains behind the school really came through. I'm so relieved and everyone at the school is happy with it as well! We all need to be reminded of ideal viewing distance, but even up close along the stairs it looks quite clear and not overly pixelated! Thank you, thank you for all your help during this process I hate to say I'm "surprised" that it looks good, but I know I had my doubts along the way and I'm happy to report that all those self doubts and fears of inadequacy were not necessary! Between your expert file prep advice and their team working on the production side I feel like it came together beautifully. ♥ Sincerely grateful, Jamie

Drumroll please.......?

Hmmm this is a great idea, I didn't see this until now. No, nothing more to report. At this point installation is rescheduled for October. I may see if there's a way I can send a hard copy for them to use as a reference for printing. Like a reverse calibration. I will keep you posted, once I see the print in it's entirety.

Thank you for the quick response, yes I'm relatively relieved and happy with the results as well. Since I do not have experience with printing on this large scale the blurry factor was off putting at first glance, but if it is par for the course and looks good from afar, then I am fine with it. Here is a screen shot of the original photo (where the sample sections were taken from on left) with the printed sample on right... I believe the entire photo is in our (long) thread. ? Even in this small section in the original there was more green, so this may need to be addressed.

When looking at this at first glance it looks quite blurry- but NOT pixelated at all, very smooth. Of course holding it a foot from your face it looks terrible. But when standing in the middle of the commons area 16 feet up onto the wall it looks fairly clear and sharp. You can see the outline of each tree along ridge and the individual "beards" (what I think of as whiskers) on wheat. I have some concerns about the color, wondering if it's too dark and dull and not bright and saturated in regards to the blues and greens. But perhaps the section they chose to print just lacks those colors anyways? They decided to split the sample into 2 sections, one of the foreground wheat and one of the background mountains. The wheat looks spot on, in color/tone and will match fairly well to the wood paneling that will be installed below the fabric down to the floor. I found out that at no place will the fabric panels be eye level or touchable. It will always be 8 feet off the ground, even along the staircase. That's a relief. You can see the line on the wall approximately where the bottom of it will sit. There was a 1 hour deliberation yesterday with all the parties involved from school to contractors when the sample arrived. At first, there was much concern about the blur of the mountains, as they wanted it to be sharper. But when they realized even to the naked eye looking off at the mountains that there is a level of softness to things off in the distance whether it's just air density or fog/mist or heat radiating off the ground that creates a bit of a mirage effect they decided that this looks "natural and real" and would only add to the painterly effect we were hoping for. We want people to almost not know whether it is a real photograph or a painting. So, unless I put a halt to production for artistic reasons and make any changes everyone else has approved this sample and will be happy with the results after installation. That is a relief. That, I am not the only one making decisions, that it is a team of people and to be "done". haha But, of course, I want it to be done right. I am so thankful for your input and to have had a professional sounding board and trouble shooter to help me get this to production... prior to reaching out to you I was making myself crazy trying to go at this alone. What are your thoughts on this? Would you agree this is as good as it can get, given the size and photo submitted?

I have written out an entire synopsis twice and both times something has glitched erasing everything I have written... each time I have to regurgitate what i had written previously I get more direct and more frustrated. lol So. I will try a third time and this time will attempt to copy the text before pressing post so I am able to paste it.

I just got the call!! I go in the morning to view the 2ft by 2ft strike off... ahhhahahhahaha! Stay tuned.... If you need me, I'll be by my bedside praying that it looks spectacular. I don't think my heart can take any other outcome.

I STILL haven't seen it! It's been crickets from the school district and the printing company. I made it very clear I wanted to see the sample when it arrived and to notify me when it did... but here we are, nothing. Now I'm so nervous I almost don't want to know. My mind is of course, going directly to worse case scenarios. I want it to be a smashing success and look amazing, but honestly, I have no idea what the sample looked like. If they decided to use it, cancel it, go a different direction. I promise, when I get answers or sneak peeks I will let you know. I am not trying to torment you! lol ♥

Good morning! Thanks for checking in, I am still waiting to hear if the strike off has arrived for previewing/reviewing... It's been good to have a brain break from this project the last couple days. I would imagine it should arrive today or tomorrow. Thursday is our Independence Day celebrations so this holiday weekend may delay things a bit and I know their hard deadline was July 11th to get this printed and installed on schedule (which I'm certain we will not make) so the installation date will be pushed back to October 2018 now. It's going into newly constructed school being built with Aug 24 opening, so there are many side projects that will need to be tended to and this, not being ready, means they have to move on to other projects and then come back to it later once construction is complete and sadly it will now interfere with school hours or will need to work around kids in the fall. ?

Sorry, thought I had! I remember intensely starting at screen when I clicked convert profile, looking for any changes. I never saw anything shift. Odd. I don't know if I just had been staring at my screen for too long and became blind to the color, feeling a bit flat and dull, but after stepping away and coming back and looking at other images compared to the final version it just didn't seem to be as bold as I thought it should be. That never pops up. I click save and then it's done.

JUST RECEIVED THIS EMAIL IN REGARDS TO THE PHOTO I SUBMITTED YESTERDAY: "After several stiff cups of coffee this morning, I think I have a work flow plan for print production and preparation that will give us the best results possible. The one caveat having just read your description below, I realize that the .PSD file for strikeoff is not enlarged or improved per your description below. Reading between the lines, I suspect you used the .JPG format as your computer would not save in .PSD once the image was enlarged to the full size image. Let me share the workflow I’m proposing and you’ll see that what I need from you is your final edited image but in .PSD or .Tiff. If there’s a way you can maintain your edits, but send me the final PSD before enlargement, that would be best. I’ll handle the enlargement on my end. Joe, I think I have a plan of action now. Step 1: Use the photographers edited final image, scale it to the correct overall mural width without rescaling the image (627” wide). Step 2: Lay out each of the six panels on the artwork (104-1/2” wide x 189-3/4” high finished size) 117” x 202” printed size for bleed. Step 3: Separate each panel into its own artwork. Step 4: Rescale and enlarge each panels artwork into as high a resolution that Photoshop will let us save. Shooting for 150-300 dpi. Step 5: Submit six art files for printing. Waiting to upscale the artwork until each panel has its own print file I think will allow us the ability to raise the pixels per inch (artificially as it may) and be able to save the files without our computers crashing. "

When I am working with files in Photoshop and click save as this is what pops up... what am I doing wrong? Maybe it did and I just don't remember, I certainly didn't change any settings when saving or look at the dialogue box if it had popped up. Seems like that screen you are referring to would pop up though when changing formats, but if it's already been flattened or saved as a jpeg this is the only option I get.