CEIF Photofair 2015: Customer Speak

Roopak Ganguly, Yestarindia Retail, New Delhi

In today’s wedding photography printing, software plays a crucial role in achieving quality prints. “We use Adobe Photoshop to get the perfect picture and also do the album designing with special effects. We receive two types of orders, pre-designed and to-be-designed. For both, we need to do colour correction and make print ready files, says Roopak Ganguly, manager, Yestarindia Retail, a customer of Konica Minolta.

Ganguly says enhancements like clear ink effect are at a very nascent stage in India. “Most customers look for economical options, hardly 2-3% of customers go for something unique and are ready to pay for it,” he says.

Besides wedding albums, Yestarindia Retail is promoting non-wedding albums through its online portal. We are getting orders for anniversaries, birthdays, and outings,” Ganguly adds.

Subhash Sabarwal, Studio Prem, New Delhi

A customer of Fujifilm, Sabarwal visited the Fujifilm stall and liked the new colour papers, which will be launched soon.

“I also liked the automatic photobook binding equipment and Acuity 1600 LED, as I am into album/photobook business,” says Sabarwal. At his shop floor, he has Cromira, HP Indigo, Noritsu 1005 and Fuji Frontier 7500.

Neeraj Choudhary, Sapphire Digital Printer, Gurgaon

Neeraj Choudhary, Sapphire Digital Printer, Gurgaon, a customer of Saffire, offers good quality printing, different shapes of albums, variety in fabrication and lamination. On enhancements, he says the raised effects can be created with simple flatbed screen printing machine. “So, there is no need of expensive solutions. We do create raised effects depending on customer demands,” he says.

On rising trends, he says amateur photobooks are a growth area. “In general, printing industry will see huge growth in labels and packaging. The next big thing for printing (which will be bigger than internet or mobile) will be the rapid prototype printing (three-dimensional printing),” he adds.

Sandeep Sood, Sood Laminate, Chandigarh

Sandeep Sood, a customer of Xerox, also uses Photoshop, as it helps correct the file and improve the picture quality. On print enhancements, he says, these days, Scodix effects are in demand. Sood reiterates that when it comes to photobooks, weddings are the main driver. All other kind of photographs contribute to just 5% in the segment, he says.

At the Photofair, Sood Laminate displayed it range of photo albums on the Xerox stand, and Sood says it was a fantastic experience. “Customers who visited our stall found our print qualities excellent. The detailing, skin tone and uniform output with smoothness were appreciated,” he concludes.