The business of digitizing precious treasures in Utah
Mike Snelson takes a painting through the digital process on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2015. Snelson has been working in the business of photography since 1973. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald
Print examples hang on the wall at Snelson PhotoColor Lab in Springville on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2015. Snelson has been working in the business of photography since 1973. SAMMY JO HESTER, The Daily Herald
When Provo resident Cynthia Gale needed to copy a prized family painting, she asked around for recommendations for the best print shop around. Her friends pointed her to Snelson PhotoColor Lab in Springville. Amazed by the quality and coloring in the copies Snelson’s made, she had more paintings digitized.
Adhis Ruiz is an artist living in Orem, and was referred to the lab a few years ago by a photographer friend. She doesn’t mind the drive to Springville for the quality she gets.
“I tried other places, and it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that the colors weren’t right,” Ruiz said. “Usually, when I can afford it, I take my paintings there so I can have a CD as a record of my art. And also so I don’t lose my art if there is a fire. When you work so hard on stuff, you want to make sure you keep it.”
There are many printers in Utah County that can copy uncopyrighted art and old photography, but few give each item as close attention as Snelson’s employees do, according to Ruiz and Gale.
“It doesn’t come cheap,” Mike Snelson, owner of Snelson PhotoColor Lab said. “But digitally, we now can get much better quality. We use top of the line processes, to give the consumer the best possible product we can produce.”
Even with top quality machinery, including a 12-color large spec printer, Mike Snelson said they never rely on just the copier. He has been doing this type of process, called gicleé, for 20 years. In earlier years, they’d capture the print on and old view camera, mount the captured photo to a camera, then hand-correct the color.
Nowadays, and still with a lot of personal “tweaking,” every digitized piece goes through a multi-step process, starting with its own photo shoot. In the basement of the lab’s building, there is one room dedicated entirely to digitally capturing artwork with a high-resolution camera, and a color bar that gives them references for the correct color. The digital copy is then loaded into Photoshop on a computer back upstairs. Using the color bar as reference, Mike or other Snelson’s employees make color corrections.
One thing Mike does to make sure that what they see on the screen will be the same as what is printed is to have 5,500 degree kelvin lights in all work areas in the building. That lighting simulates daylight and is the industry color standard. The computer monitors are also regularly calibrated and recalibrated to mimic that same light tone, because of the difference in seeing light reflected off a painting in real life, and light projected electrically through a monitor.
The final product is often so close to the original that customers are hard-pressed to tell the difference. Gale said she was amazed at the almost perfect color match of two watercolor paintings the lab digitized for her, and holding the original next to the copy, it is in actuality difficult to see the differences.
Mike himself is often amazed by the results even. He recalled a job they did for Central Bank, where they digitized various original paintings, so all the branches could have their own copies.
“I’m the one who did the copying and printing, but when I walk into one of their branches, I don’t know if it’s the original or the copy until I go right up to it,” Mike said.
Mike comes from a long line of printers. His grandfather, Ralph Snelson was a photographer and learned the finishing trade in the late 1800s. He ran a portrait studio in Springville until 1959. Mike’s father, Ralph Snelson Jr. grew up processing photos with his father, and started a processing business from his basement. In the 1970s, he opened a shop in Springville. In 1984, the Snelson family went in together with another businessman, and built the church-like building on Center Street where Snelson PhotoColor Lab is today.
“We partnered with a wedding caterer who wanted a place to hold receptions. That’s why it looks like a church. He was one the main floor, and we were in the basement,” Mike laughed.
Mike took over Snelson PhotoColor Lab in 1991, right about the time Snelson’s bought out the caterer and expanded into the whole building because business was booming. At the peak of their business, Snelson’s boasted about 36 employees. Today, because of changes from analog to digital in the photography industry, and the influx of smartphones, Mike said they have five employees.
“People just don’t print things any more. It’s on their phone or computer, and they just don’t get around to it,” Mike said.
The high-level of craftsmanship county artists and photographers have come to rely on at Snelson’s won’t always be around, though. Mike has steered his six children away from the printing industry, and luckily, he said, they’ve listened.
“Photography is a hard way to make a living. Not just here, but everywhere, I hear the same thing,” Mike said.
Though photo printing has declined, Snelson’s has found a niche in digitizing art as well as recapturing history and doing color restoration. Mike has spent his summer working on a large project for Payson High School, digitizing old photos of the school’s past principals. The photos came in all different sizes and quality, and Mike’s been resizing and tweaking them, digitally restoring them all to the same size and quality. The finished product will be a collage the school will hang in its building near the offices.
He also recently digitally recaptured a small photo of a man’s first car from the ’50s. It was badly faded and in very poor quality, but Mike spent hours matching the original GM color for the car, and restoring all the ambient color.
“When he brought that in, I thought, ‘Oh man, how am I going to do this’,” Mike said. “But when he saw it, he teared up, and said it was exactly as he’d remembered it.”
For now, while there is still a need for the Mike’s expertise, and he still has the health to do it, he will continue to provide it.
