What Makes Permalife so special?
Permalife is an exclusive printing process only offered through Lawlor Photography. The creation of the image is a 6 step, meticulously crafted process. Peter mines specific images that are best suited to this amazing process. Images will often exceed 250MB (which is an enormous file size) in order to facilitate the largest wall art possible.
- Images are prepped personally by Peter; in the case of panoramas, images must be painstakingly stitched together to make one cohesive pano.
- The resulting file is then sent to a Hungarian graphic artist to classify areas of the image that Peter has assigned, to achieve the relief, embossing or a combination of both.
- The 1/10” high-grade aluminum (over 3 times as thick as typical dye-sub aluminum found at other pro labs), that the final image will be transferred to, is pre-worked by artisans; this process not only prepares the fine metal for the next step, but etches areas by hand for unique effect. This handcrafted process ensures that each Permalife piece is an original work of art.
- After the aluminum substrate has had it’s proprietary base powder coat applied; the file specifications are fed into the Permalife algorithms – the printer begins to lay down the image one pixel at a time. This is where relief areas of the image, or embossed areas are created by multiple passes. These special pigmented inks are world sourced (and extremely expensive) for the Permalife printing application.
- The imaged product is cured utilizing ultraviolet light. The process insures greater fade resistance to harmful UV light which an heirloom image may encounter when exposed to direct sunlight (or simply being displayed in your great room, or a business lobby).
- A final protective coating is applied, then heat-set at a temperature of 860 degrees Fahrenheit. The Permalife image can now be washed with soap and water giving the client years of viewing enjoyment without the worry of physical print damage inherent in other printing technologies.