High street photo labs are no longer just places to take in rolls of holiday film. Most now offer specialised photographic and print services for businesses, including retailers.

Take Snappy Snaps, for example, one of the country’s leading print, copy and design franchises. The company’s Brighton bureau has just invested in Epson’s Stylus Pro 10000CF digital printer from Applied Image Technology (AIT) so it could meet its customers’ demand for large format
reproductions in-house.

“There is a large and varied cross section passing through the doors at Snappy Snaps and many of these customers are asking for specialised prints,” explains store owner, Barry Ogilvie. “It was becoming apparent that being able to produce large format quality prints at speed would prove a highly popular service and a profitable extension to the business. With the recent addition of the Epson Stylus Pro, we are able to take on one-off and multiple large format jobs and still deliver the high standards our customers have come to expect.”

Snappy Snaps (Brighton) selected the Stylus Pro 10000CF because of its ease of use, quality - 1440dpi x 720dpi resolution, combined with inks which are lightfast for over 200 years - and print speeds of up to 20sqm/hour.

Epson Photo Accelerator Technology has significantly enhanced data processing times, while reseller, AIT, also supplied its sophisticated Shiraz wide format PostScript RIP, giving the operator total control over colour, ink droplet size and placement.

Since installing the Epson large format printer, Snappy Snaps (Brighton) has seen a significant increase in demand for point of sale posters from neighbouring retailers.

“One customer came into the shop with a black and white print which featured a rose,” recalls Barry Ogilvie. “He wanted to tint the rose red whilst keeping the rest of the print black and white. In the past, doing this with any degree of quality would take a professional a whole day. With the Stylus Pro 10000CF, the same finished quality can be achieved in about half an hour and at a fraction of the cost.”