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About Giclée Printing

“Giclée” - pronounced ‘Gee Clay’ - from the French verb meaning ‘to squirt’.

Introduction to Giclée printing

Using a top quality digital inkjet printer, stunning pieces of printed artwork or photography can be produced.

In the United States, Giclée prints are providing huge growth in the print market, taking over from the traditional methods (lithographs and screen printing), especially in the fine art business. It has now become the most popular and requested way for artists, galleries and publishers to make reproductions and prints. The knock on effect has been that the traditional methods have been left behind, whilst the majority of printed images in the US are produced using the Giclée techniques.

How Giclée printing works

This transformation of the way that artwork is reproduced is down to computer technology combining forces with advancing printing techniques. It works by the digital inkjet printer ‘squirting’ minute droplets of ink onto heavy water-colour paper or artists canvas. The computer then controls the ink droplets producing a high resolution image. The fine quality of the printed image is exceptional when compared to conventional printing. The commands relating to the image and printer are recorded as a digital file and can be accessed on demand. This means that an edition can be proofed and then tested for popularity. Then when the artist, gallery or publisher wishes to print more copies of the image they can be produced as and whenever needed.

Background of Giclée printing

The first Giclée machine was an Iris printer, many are still in use today and the manufacturers claim to lead the field in Giclée printing. Iris printers print on a drum which revolves at high speed. This means that the size of the drum dictates the maximum size of paper or canvas, which has to be flexible to fix around the drum. In fact the maximum size is about 34 inches by 46 inches. Other machine makers include : Epson, Mimaki, Mutoh, Hewlett Packard and Roland.

Lightfastness of Giclée prints

The problem with some early Giclée prints was that they were found to be fugitive. This means that the inks faded quickly when exposed to sunlight. Not something you want to happen to your treasured print! Recently, this problem has been solved by the use of much more stable ink-sets and specially coated papers and canvas. We now have a second generation of giclee printers, which are able to use pigmented inks that are extremely stable, with the paper being fed into the printer from a flat bed or from a roll. These later machines can be left to print from a roll unattended which brings down the labour costs.

Giclée printing at West End Gallery

We use CANON large format Giclée Printers which benefit from lightfast pigmented inksets and we use high quality coated Hahnemule papers and canvas. In our opinion this combination produces the best quality Giclée Prints in the world.

We have now installed the very latest PHASE ONE FX SCANBACK CAMERA which means we can now scan artwork up to 1Metre Square at 300dpi straight to file. No more need for expensive transparencies.