Snapmad.com was one of the very first websites to offer people a quick and easy way of ordering their digital photographs online. They have just installed a brand new ZBE Chriomira 5x30 ProLab wide format photo imaging lab at their premises in Guernsey.

Starting out life over 12 years ago as dlab7.com by offering a high quality but competitively priced E6 processing lab and then expanding into traditional C41 D & P plus enlargements with the purchase of two Fuji Frontier 390’s, Brehaut saw a gap in the market with the rise in popularity of digital photography. They re-branded the company as snapmad.com and started offering an online service to meet with the demand. This re-brand proved to be extremely successful and as a result, they have just moved into larger, purpose-built premises and the delivery of the new ZBE Chromira lab was timed to coincide with the move.

“Our success has always depended on offering good quality at competitive prices”, so states manager of snapmad.com Geoff Brehaut, “and this new Chromira Lab represents a considerable investment to maintain these exacting standards for our customers.”

As the UK is only just coming out of recession, one wonders what makes a company invest in capital equipment - Brehaut explains the reasons behind their purchasing decision; “The digital printer and processor we were formerly using were proving too time consuming, which prohibited us from reducing the prices to where we’d like them for our customers. We started looking around for a solution and the Chromira proved to be the answer. But of course, not only wre we buying new equipment, we were moving premises also. We knew that the UK distributor, Atech Limted, had a very “hands-on” approach to business and this combined with their experience in the photographic and photo-imaging field made the transition from the old lab to our new premises a breeze! And the Chromira engineer was brilliant with the set up and in-house training.”

The Chromira 5x ProLab is a fully integrated, professional 30" digital printer/processor lab system that automatically nests, sorts, back-prints, cuts, and collates package orders of small prints, larger prints, and murals with perfectly color-matched, flawless results.  This significantly reduces turnaround times, labour, energy, and operational requirements.  ProLab prints stunning digital images from 3’x5’ to 30”x100’ from one roll of 30’ media ensuring perfect color matching, simple operation, reduced inventory keeping, and low waste.

The ProLab uses state-of-the-art, award-winning, and patented LED technology to create beautiful, high quality prints. It images on any RA-4 media and surface, including backlit display films.  Chromira ProLab provides labs a competitive advantage in and across market segments, including portrait, wedding, commercial, custom, fine art, event, schools, and consumer.  It produces innovative products for customers with very different requirements, preferences, and expectations and will still be a perfect match for every one.

Brehaut continues; “The Chromira Lab has literally transformed our in-lab working practices, streamlining production to the extent that we use just one of the Frontiers for smaller print sizes and long print runs (such as flyers etc.). The Chromira can easily cope with the remaining work in a seamless fashion. We are also delighted with the quality it produces: very sharp, vibrant colours and excellent gradation.”