PIKTO

55 Mill Street
the Distillery District
Toronto, ON M5A 3C4
Canada
(416) 203-3443
www.pikto.ca

André Souroujon and business partner Saul Lederman opened Pikto one year ago. At the outset, it was more than just a digital photolab. Occupying two floors in the Distillery District of downtown Toronto, Pikto houses a gallery and retail area on the first floor. The gallery showcases work of both local and international talent, and is also featured online. Says Lederman, "The gallery's main purpose is as a means of inspiration for customers." "We have a café lounge as well," adds Souroujon. "The whole concept is that we encourage people [to view this as] not just a gallery, not just a lab." They conceived it as an environment where photographers can discuss photography.

Pikto offers E-6 and C-41 processing, as well as custom scans. "One thing that we're doing differently is that we're not only allowing people to drop off their work for custom services, like a traditional lab, but if a photographer wants to have more control, he can rent a workstation and scanner and print right from the desktop," Souroujon says.

"The approach we're using is very much an open approach," he adds. "If you don't want to deal with any of the production, then we'll do it for you. But if you want to be hands-on, we give you the tools to achieve what you want."

They currently have four workstations (two G5 and two G4 Macs), selectively outfitted with a Nikon Coolscan 9000, an Imacon 848 and an Epson 1640 scanner. "And we guide people. Usually the first time you rent, we give customers a half hour of training, on top of the hour charged, so that we can go through the whole process." You can also rent a portable hard drive, as well as write files to CD or DVD. Workstation rentals start at $25 per hour, with discounts for frequent usage.

For Giclée prints, there are two Epson 9600s--one with matte black ink, the other with photo black ink--to suit various papers (starting at $11 per square foot for prints you output, or $80 per 18 x 24-inch custom prints.) Souroujon notes that prints are output while you work, freeing you up to remain at the workstation to process more images. C-prints produced from your workstation range from $0.45/4 x 6 to $6/12 x 18 inches, and are ready in under ten minutes. (All prices in Canadian dollars.)

"One thing very important for our customers is that everything here is color-calibrated" to ensure accurate output, whether chromogenic or Giclée, Lederman points out. In fact, on-site monitor calibration ($95 for up to three monitors) in the Toronto area is an additional service, or you can have a laptop calibrated at the lab ($25). Beyond that, printer paper profiles can be done from practically anywhere, via guided procedures over the phone, with the profiles e-mailed to you ($150/two papers). "To complement the whole working environment, another important thing is the FTP site. Customers can download the color profiles, and they just FTP their images for us to print out, saving a lot of time." Other services include digital color correction and retouching.

--Jack Neubart-Jack Neubart