Join the Riso Club
Risograph Printing at Looky Here: Greenfield, MA’s only community-access Risograph printer — and the only one within 126 miles!
Riso Club members get access to our Risograph SF5130 printer at:
- $20/hour for machine time
- $5.50 per master
- $0.05 per copy/impression
How to Join
Before becoming a Riso Club member, you’ll need to take a one-on-one lesson.
- Lesson cost: $60/hour
We’ll walk you through the ins and outs of using the Riso, which typically takes one hour. - Want to include Photoshop basics or focus on a specific project? Add another hour for a more tailored session.
- 🗓️ Lessons are only offered on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
After your lesson, you’ll complete your membership form and can start booking time on the machine.
Booking a Lesson or Riso Time
To schedule a lesson or Riso Club time:
- Email us at LookyHereGreenfield@gmail.com to inquire about available dates. We’re open every day from 12:00–5:00 PM.
- Once we confirm your time, prepayment is required to reserve your spot.
- This payment is non-refundable.
- If you cancel with at least one week’s notice, we’re happy to reschedule.
- Cancellations with less than a week’s notice cannot be rescheduled.
Print Jobs (Done-for-You Printing)
Prefer we handle the printing? We offer full-service Risograph print jobs at:
- $40/hour (1-hour minimum)
- $6 per master
- $0.10 per impression/copy
Once we review your files, we’ll send an invoice. Payment is required before we begin.
Please note:
- Risograph printing comes with its own quirks—misregistration and smudges are part of the process (and the charm!).
- We recommend ordering extra copies to ensure you’re happy with the results.
Paper Guidelines
You must supply your own paper for both Riso Club time and Print Jobs.
Maximum image area: 8.25″ x 13.75″ (with a ¼-inch margin)
We do not provide paper from the shop.
We recommend French Paper, but any uncoated paper up to 110lb cardstock works.
Maximum sheet size: 11″ x 17″
How it works:
The Risograph SF 5130 has a single drum. We manually switch the colors to create color layers, therefore your image must be color separated. This can be done in separate Photoshop files, all set to grayscale. (The machine will deposit the most colored ink on the areas with the heaviest “black” information.) Or images can be printed directly from the scan bed, in solid colors with the opportunity for multiple color overlays.
Please provide high resolution (300-600 dpi) grayscale PDFs – one for each color of your project. The Riso will convert the gray values to halftones, so no need to do that ahead of time. If your project is full-bleed, include at least an 1/8 inch bleed area either embedded in the file or otherwise indicated. For books and booklets, provide your project in reading order.
We are capable of replicating full-color images using a faux-CMYK process using 3 or 4 inks to reproduce a more complete spectrum of color.
Risograph Printing always contains slight imperfections. These include:
- Smudging. Risograph ink is made from a combination of environmentally friendly soy oil, water and pigment, the prints are reminiscent of newspaper ink and it is possible to smudge the ink.
- Uneven coverage. Large flat areas of solid ink coverage are likely to show some slight variations, which can include pinholes and flooding.
- Registration. Riso is like screen printing in that each ink color is layered on separately. A single piece of paper will run through our machines several times for multi-color projects and the overlap of colors can be irregular.
- Tire marks. When a paper is fed through the machine multiple times and it is heavily inked, the paper feeder rollers may leave tire marks on the pages face or end sheets.
Much of this valuable information was written by Risolve Studio in southeastern Pennsylvania! Find more of their resources at risolvestudio.com.
Looky Here currently has 4 colors of ink:
Black, Teal, Yellow and Fluorescent Pink.
Though not 100% acurate, these ink colors can be translated to these HEX#s for creating a Photoshop proof.
yellow- ffe800 teal- 00838a pink- ff48b0
To see how these colors will blend on paper, be sure to set each channel to “multiply”
You will want to make a separate layer for each of the ink colors. You can do this by copy and pasting the “color channels” from CMYK into new layers in grayscale. *Note that you may need to darken these images once they are converted so that your darkest yellows are the blackest black.
Teal Layer (grayscale)
