What is Giclée?

If you walk into an art gallery or go through their cat­a­logue, chances are you would find a sec­tion reserved for repro­duced art­work. It would come under the strange sound­ing name, gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com (pro­nounced zhee-clay). What exactly is gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com, you might wonder.

GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjetInkjet printer is a type of com­puter printer that repro­duces a dig­i­tal image by pro­pelling variably-sized droplets of liq­uid ink onto a page. More infor­ma­tion about inkjet print­ing you can find at www.Gicleestore.com print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). Before the era of high qual­ity dig­i­tal print­ing, fine art prints were usu­ally pro­duced by con­ven­tional four-color off­set lith­o­g­ra­phy. Since the 1990s, that role has been taken over by gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com printing.

His­tory:

In the late 1980’s, the dig­i­tal print­ing pio­neers were look­ing for a new iden­tity for the beau­ti­ful prints they had worked so hard to achieve.  They wanted a dis­tinc­tion between their artis­tic work and the com­mer­cial pre-press proofs churned out by IRIS printers.

Ini­tially, IRIS prints were not quite top­notch. Their color fast­ness was doubt­ful, and the prints tended to fade within a few years.  It was also not pos­si­ble to achieve a com­pletely smooth tran­si­tion of color gra­di­ents, so impor­tant for repro­duc­ing art­work. After all, they were used mainly to match col­ors before the mass scale print run.

The devel­op­ment of new tech­nol­ogy changed all that.

• Archival inks with fade-resistant prop­er­ties increased the life of the prints.
• The ver­sa­til­ity of inkjetInkjet printer is a type of com­puter printer that repro­duces a dig­i­tal image by pro­pelling variably-sized droplets of liq­uid ink onto a page. More infor­ma­tion about inkjet print­ing you can find at www.Gicleestore.com print­ing enabled print­ing on a great range of sub­strates, the media on which prints are taken. (GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints are today taken on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com, water color paper, photo-base papers, even vinyl and trans­par­ent acetates).
• Finally, exten­sive research by the pio­neers fine-tuned the process.

Dig­i­tal prints of paint­ings and other art­work had finally come of age.

Brand­ing

How­ever, in the art world, words like “com­puter” and “dig­i­tal” still had neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions. Jack Duganne of Nash Edi­tions, Cal­i­for­nia sup­plied the per­fect name for the new art form in 1991. He searched for a French word for the noz­zle, which was generic enough for most print­ers, and it was le gicleur. The related French word for the verb “to spray” was gicler, and its noun ver­sion (fem­i­nine) was la gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com or “that which is sprayed”. GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com soon became another name for high qual­ity art prints with IRIS inkjetInkjet printer is a type of com­puter printer that repro­duces a dig­i­tal image by pro­pelling variably-sized droplets of liq­uid ink onto a page. More infor­ma­tion about inkjet print­ing you can find at www.Gicleestore.com printers.

GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com how­ever was to become more than a brand name. It started being used as a broad generic term for any dig­i­tally pro­duced high qual­ity fine-art print.

There have been attempts to stan­dard­ize the qual­ity of gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints by var­i­ous print­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions. Some of the com­mon require­ments are –

• Light fast­ness – 6 or higher on the Blue Wool Scale
• pH  of the sub­strate rang­ing between 7 – 9
• Weight of sub­strate at least 250 gsm
• Men­tion of var­i­ous details like title, artist’s name, publisher’s name and year of print
• Infor­ma­tion on sub­strate, ink type and machine/production details.

Tech­nol­ogy and print­ing methods

GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints are high res­o­lu­tion, high qual­ity repro­duc­tions printed indi­vid­u­ally from a dig­i­tal file using spe­cial large for­mat print­ers. This file can not only be a dig­i­tally scanned image of a tra­di­tional art­work, but also dig­i­tal art which has no tan­gi­ble “orig­i­nal” art­work that can hang on a wall.

InkjetInkjet printer is a type of com­puter printer that repro­duces a dig­i­tal image by pro­pelling variably-sized droplets of liq­uid ink onto a page. More infor­ma­tion about inkjet print­ing you can find at www.Gicleestore.com tech­nol­ogy used in gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com print­ing is way ahead of what the com­mon desk­top printer uses.

• GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com print­ing these days employs six or more col­ors, includ­ing vari­ants of the same color (for exam­ple, reg­u­lar cyan ‘C’ and light cyan ’c’). A six color CcM­mYK model greatly improves print qual­ity by increas­ing middle-tones. This increases the per­ceived res­o­lu­tion and rich­ness of the print and the abil­ity to cap­ture sub­tle color distinctions.
• Archival qual­ity pig­ment based inks (instead of dye-based inks) ensure bet­ter light fast­ness. Unlike a dye, a pig­ment par­ti­cle is not com­pletely sol­u­ble in its base. It also tends to be larger and less sus­cep­ti­ble to envi­ron­men­tal dam­age, and the image sta­bil­ity of pig­ment prints is there­fore far supe­rior to that of dye based prints.
• A large num­ber of fine replace­able print-heads ensure a wider color range (gamut) and allows print­ing on dif­fer­ent substrates.
• A com­bi­na­tion of pre­cise color cor­rec­tion and expert scan­ning helps gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com print­ing pro­vide bet­ter color accu­racy than other tech­niques of reproduction.

Advan­tages of gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com

Before gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com was devel­oped, there were a num­ber of other tech­niques avail­able to make prints of orig­i­nal art­work. The most pop­u­lar was the con­ven­tional four-color off­set lith­o­g­ra­phy. It is a pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process of image print­ing car­ried out by com­mer­cial print­ing presses.

Both gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com and off­set litho prints have extended the reach of high art into homes by mak­ing them afford­able to many buy­ers, who can­not pay for an orig­i­nal. In terms of qual­ity of print­ing, both these meth­ods of repro­duc­tion are accepted by gal­leries. They can be used to churn out qual­ity prints that can sur­vive the rav­ages of time.

How­ever, gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints have a few advan­tages over off­set litho prints. The advan­tages per­tain to qual­ity, con­ve­nience and economy.

The Qual­ity Advan­tage:

In off­set litho, tiny dots in four col­ors are printed in vary­ing sizes to deceive the eye into see­ing dif­fer­ent colors.

On the other hand, in gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints as in all inkjetInkjet printer is a type of com­puter printer that repro­duces a dig­i­tal image by pro­pelling variably-sized droplets of liq­uid ink onto a page. More infor­ma­tion about inkjet print­ing you can find at www.Gicleestore.com print­ing, spray­ing the ink onto the sub­strate actu­ally mixes the col­ors to cre­ate exact shades and vir­tu­ally con­tin­u­ous tones.  The color range (gamut) of gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com is beyond the scope of lith­o­g­ra­phy. As a result, gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints are prized by col­lec­tors for their qual­ity and fidelity.

Con­ve­nience:

Once an art­work is dig­i­tally scanned and archived, the artist can get it cus­tom printed on demand with min­i­mal effort, as and when required.

This also gives the artist con­trol and flex­i­bil­ity over all aspects of print­ing – the size, the media, and the color tone. The artist can even own and oper­ate the printer.

Print­ing directly from a dig­i­tal file does away with inter­me­di­ate neg­a­tives and plates, asso­ci­ated with litho print­ing, which reduce image detail.

Archived files are also less likely to dete­ri­o­rate than slides or negatives.

Econ­omy

GicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com print­ing is an eco­nom­i­cal alter­na­tive to off­set litho prints. Though the cost to print a gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com print can be as much as $50 com­pared to about $5 for an off­set litho print, the lat­ter has print runs of at least 1000.

Cap­i­tal out­lay, mar­ket­ing and stor­age costs for litho prints work out much higher. The artist can print and sell gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints one at a time, accord­ing to demand, at a much lower cost.

Con­sid­er­ing all this, you can truly say that gicléeGiclée is a type of dig­i­tal fine-art inkjet print, usu­ally repro­duc­tions of art­work orig­i­nally cre­ated in tra­di­tional media (paint­ings, draw­ing, and so on). You can order Fine Art Giclée Repro­duc­tion or Cus­tom Giclée with your own photo on can­vasCan­vas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fab­ric used for paint­ing sur­face, typ­i­cally stretched. More infor­ma­tion about can­vas you can find at www.Gicleestore.com at www.gicleestore.com prints have been a god­send to artists, gal­leries and col­lec­tors alike.

Tags: Giclee, Ink-jet Printing, Photo on Canvas, Printing on Canvas

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One Response to “What is Giclée?”

1. Isadora says:

   January 25, 2010 at 2:54 pm

   I just wanted to say that I enjoyed read­ing your arti­cle. It was very infor­ma­tive.
   I own a few Giclee but never quite under­stood what brought out the detailing.