Color Photo Art (CPA) is an on-line business that provides access to and distributes feasible and reliable limited edition fine art photography and royalty free images for collection or commercial purposes.

Our list of artists and categories is an endowment containing a select reserve of available unpublished images suited to the demand of a growing creative and commercial market.

From our collections, we offer selected limited editions in fine art photography, by up and coming as well as established artists, printed in a variety of processes including dye transfer.

This concept of limited edition aligns with our mission to provide fine art work from new, talented artists making their work accessible for promotion.

In addition to these limited edition series of photography collections, CPA also has books, portfolios, and stock images available for your special artistic interests, taste and selection.

ABOUT DYE TRANSFER PROCESS

Dye transfer is virtually the only color photographic printing process accepted by curators and museums as collectible art objects.

Dye transfer prints will last much longer than color photo prints made with the traditional light-sensitive chemical paper which is subject to color degradation from light exposure.

By contrast, dye transfer printing is a painstaking and expensive process whereby a transparency is separated into color separation negatives and matrices representing the three basic colors. They are printed using cyan, magenta and yellow natural dyes which are transferred in perfect registration producing the highest quality prints accepted as collectible art objects.

Why are dye transfers more valuable than regular photographs? If you've asked yourself how dye transfers are priced and couldn't find an answer, here are some reasons: First, dye transfer printing is a delicate, challenging and exhaustive technique requiring meticulous handling of every aspect of the process. (click here to see some of the steps in the printing process). This process adds hours of work to a photographer's job and allows one to acquire not a photographic reproduction but an original piece of art. It also gives each image a unique personality not transmitted by any other photo printing technique.

Secondly, because of it's use of natural dyes, dye transfer prints last much longer (400 years or more) than common chemical printing. Regular commercial photographs begin to fade over time with a vastly inferior color definition than photographs produced by the dye transfer process. In fact, dye transfer is the only printing process accepted as museum quality.

Another consideration is that the actual dye transfer process is rather expensive and limited. Usually no more than 100 copies of each photograph are created, while in many cases much less, instantly increasing their est. value. Some of the IIPA's Permanent Collection images belong to limited editions of 2 and up to 5 prints. After an original mold has been created it can print only so many prints before it brakes down. Once it does it can never be accurately reproduced.

What's more, having been printed does not mean it is still available. Many prints disappear, get lost, are destroyed, or are misplaced thus adding est. value to those prints which remain from a specific series. Many of the photos housed in the IIPA's Permanent Collection have done more than survived, they are still in mint condition.

So, as you can see, owning a dye transfer limited edition print is equivalent to owning a unique painting where beauty and est. value combine with quality, physical condition, desirability and availability to form a masterpiece.