For some, knowing the differences between purple and violet, taupe and tan is a detail best left to the fashionistas. But for others, it could be the selling point that takes their business to the next level. This type of nuance is exactly what it took for Tom Crozier, co-founder and owner of Picture Salon, a fine art digital printing service for artists and photographers based in Madison, Wisconsin to win the business of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Museum of Art , and a slew of other discerning artists, photographers and other visual designers.

A trained and working artist, Tom Crozier began his foray into the world of fine art printing, along with his wife and partner Barbara, by selling his own pieces in local fairs. After being approached by a number of artists requesting assistance in getting their own works printed, Tom and Barbara recognized the need for reliable, high quality, large-format print services. They decided to create a business that would focus on large format printing, and soon came across the world of “Giclee,” the production of fine art digital prints made on ink-jet printers. Since the printer they worked with at that time used professional-level printers, they figured it was the safe bet and made it their first purchase.

Unfortunately, the troubles soon began for the art connoisseur couple. First of all, the printer they selected didn’t have all the necessary shades of black options stocked in the device. Each time a new order request came in, Tom and Barbara had to swap the glossy for the matte black ink, resulting in wasted ink. On top of that, the printer would go through numerous, unnecessary cleaning cycles, eating up even more ink. The pooling and loss of ink led to other problems, and Barbara was finding herself performing frequent nozzle checks on the device to unclog the system.

“We process on average 20 jobs per day and insist on delivering a perfect product for each one. An efficient and reliable printer is extremely important to us,” said Barbara Crozier, co-owner of Picture Salon. “The issues we were running into with the printer we had at that time were losing us time and money. My jaw clenched every time I heard the cleaning cycle kick in as I knew it was just flushing revenue down the drain.”

After a year and a half, Tom and Barbara were fed up. They took a step back, conducting their printer research once again, and opted to purchase a Canon imagePROGRAF 44-inch, 12-color model. The change in results was drastic. To begin with, the imagePROGRAF carried both versions of black ink at once and the cleaning cycles were more efficient and well-timed, saving them significant money in conserved ink. Further, maintenance overall ceased to be an issue. In the five years since they purchased the first imagePROGRAF, they have only had to call service once with an issue that ended up needing to be resolved by another vendor anyway.

“The impact on our bottom-line since switching to a Canon printer has been very noticeable,” said Tom Crozier. “Not only is the output twice as fast, the time we need to invest for maintenance is significantly less. Now, we just take up the reel, connect the canvas to it and let it print by itself without having to babysit.”

Tom and Barbara have since grown their fleet of imagePROGRAF printers to three 12-color models, including one imagePROGRAF 60-inch and one imagePROGRAF 17-inch. The first proof comes out on the smaller imagePROGRAF 17-inch, giving Tom the opportunity to ensure the precise color matching – for which he is known – is produced in the final product, which is sent through the imagePROGRAF 60-inch.