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, giclée (pronounced zhee-clay). What exactly is giclée, you might wonder.
Giclée is a type of digital fine-art inkjet print, normally reproductions of artwork originally created in original media (paintings, drawing, and so on). Before the era of high capability digital printing, fine art prints were normally produced by approved four-color offset lithography. Since the 1990s, that role has been taken over by giclée printing.
Litho Printing
History.
In the late 1980's, the digital printing pioneers were looking for a new identity for the gorgeous prints they had worked so hard to achieve. They wanted a disagreement in the middle of 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 inherent to perform a thoroughly flat transition of color gradients, so prominent for reproducing artwork. After all, they were used in general 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 inkjet printing enabled printing on a great range of substrates, the media on which prints are taken. (Giclee prints are today taken on canvas, water color paper, photo-base papers, even vinyl and transparent acetates).
* Finally, allembracing research by the pioneers fine-tuned the process.
Digital prints of paintings and other artwork had ultimately 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 associated French word for the verb "to spray" was gicler, and its noun version (feminine) was la giclee or "that which is sprayed". Giclee soon became someone else name for high capability art prints with Iris inkjet printers.
Giclee any way was to come to be more than a brand name. It started being used as a broad generic term for any digitally produced high capability fine-art print.
There have been attempts to standardize the capability of giclée prints by assorted printers' associations. Some of the base requirements are:
* Light fastness - 6 or higher on the Blue Wool Scale
* pH of the substrate fluctuating in the middle of 7 - 9
* Weight of substrate at least 250 gsm
* Mention of assorted details like title, artist's name, publisher's name and year of print
* data on substrate, ink type and machine/production details.
Technology and printing methods.
Giclée prints are high resolution, high capability reproductions printed individually from a digital file using extra large format printers. This file can not only be a digitally scanned image of a original artwork, but also digital art which has no tangible "original" artwork that can hang on a wall.
Inkjet technology used in giclée printing is way ahead of what the base desktop printer uses.
* Giclée printing these days employs six or more colors, along with variants of the same color (for example, quarterly cyan 'C' and light cyan 'c'). A six color CcMmYk model greatly improves print capability by expanding middle-tones. This increases the perceived resolution and richness of the print and the capability to capture subtle color distinctions.
* Archival capability pigment based inks (instead of dye-based inks) ensure good light fastness. Unlike a dye, a pigment particle is not thoroughly 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 first-rate to that of dye based prints.
* A large whole of fine replaceable print-heads ensure a wider color range (gamut) and allows printing on different substrates.
* A blend of exact color revising and specialist scanning helps giclée printing provide good color accuracy than other techniques of reproduction.
Advantages of giclée.
Before giclée was developed, there were a whole of other techniques available to make prints of original artwork. The most favorite was the approved four-color offset lithography. It is a photomechanical process of image printing carried out by commercial printing presses.
Both giclée and offset litho prints have extended the reach of high art into homes by production them affordable to many buyers, who cannot pay for an original. In terms of capability of printing, both these methods of reproduction are suitable by galleries. They can be used to churn out capability prints that can survive the ravages of time.
However, giclée prints have a few advantages over offset litho prints. The advantages pertain to quality, convenience and economy.
The capability Advantage.
In offset litho, tiny dots in four colors are printed in varying sizes to deceive the eye into looking different colors.
On the other hand, in giclée prints as in all inkjet printing, spraying the ink onto the substrate de facto mixes the colors to originate exact shades and virtually continuous tones. The color range (gamut) of giclée is beyond the scope of lithography. As a result, giclée prints are prized by collectors for their capability and fidelity.
Convenience.
Once an artwork is digitally scanned and archived, the artist can get it convention printed on inquire 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 control the printer.
Printing directly from a digital file does away with intermediate negatives and plates, associated with litho printing, which cut image detail.
Archived files are also less likely to deteriorate than slides or negatives.
Economy
Giclée printing is an thrifty alternative to offset litho prints. Though the cost to print a giclée print can be as much as compared to about for an offset litho print, the latter has print runs of at least 1000.
Capital outlay, marketing and warehouse costs for litho prints work out much higher. The artist can print and sell giclée prints one at a time, according to demand, at a much lower cost.
Considering all this, you can truly say that giclée prints have been a godsend to artists, galleries and collectors alike.
What is Giclee Litho Printing
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