Giclee Printing

The French word “Giclee” was invented to name the process of fine arts on Iris printers, done through an ink jet printing method from a digital source. This word was mainly taken from the French word “le gicleur” which means “nozzle”. To be more specific the word “glicer” means “to spurt” or “spray” through a nozzle. The word giclee was started by a print maker Jack Duganne in 1991. He was a print maker and used to work in a field for representing any kind of ink jet print which is used as fine arts. Giclee prints are often used in print shops and in galleries.

Origin of giclee prints:

Before the use of giclee printing, the methods of ink jet technology were used as an alternative option to serigraphy and lithography. Afterward, the word giclee was invented to describe the methods of digital prints used as fine arts. It was first created on the Iris graphics in the early 1990s with the help of continuous ink jet printers. Iris printers were initially used for producing the prepress proofs from the digital files for the job of colour matching. Gradually, giclee printing developed and became very popular among the publishers, artists, galleries and photographers for the fine art reproductions. Finally, in 2001 the GPA (Giclee Printers association) was formed where a clear distinction was made between a high quality giclee print and lower quality ink jet print. As the demand of art buyers purchasing high quality prints have increased, the concept of giclee print became more popular.

Today’s giclee technology:

Giclee printing has become a big hit among every photographer and artists. This type of printing is mainly used to make reproductions of the original artworks and photographs. This is more expensive than the old process of lithography which was traditionally used to get such reproductions. To get better results than lithography prints, high end archival inks are used. In this type of printing, there is a dot pattern which is not visible to the naked eyes. And its colors are very bright and fade resistant.

Giclee is a technique used on various types of media. For example - canvas, archival adhesive paper, water color paper, etc. The depth of giclee’s prints and its range of colors are far better than those of lithography prints. It has got a higher resolution than any other print. The secret behind this success is the combination of Archival Paper and Archival Pigment Inks, which makes light fastness for 100 years and can be extended up to 200 years in perfect lighting conditions.

Nowadays, whether you’re interested in photography or scrapbooking or creating your own reproductions, you can easily get the art materials in cut sheets available on Internet. This type of print is more popular in today’s world because it provides depth and luminosity which represents the original work better than any other modern printing technique. Because of all these reasons, the concept of giclee printing is very popular among all the professional artists.