Giclée printing

The term Giclée (pronounced jhee'clay) was, reputedly, first coined by Jack Duganne in 1991, and is derived from the French verb gicler meaning 'to squirt out; (of blood) to spurt (out)'¹.

Giclée printing is a relatively new reproduction process for fine art which is based on digital technology. Images are scanned at high resolution and then, in conjunction with the artist, the image is digitally adjusted to create a reproduction as close to the artist’s intent as possible.

A Giclée printer squirts microscopic droplets of ink onto the print media at a very high resolution. Unlike lithograph and serigraph printers, there are no intermediate screens in this process, resulting is a very smooth graduation of colour. The superior quality of inks used give bright, vibrant colour. When matched with high quality print media this produces prints that have a surprisingly good resistance to fading.

The advantage of Giclée printing is that, once the image has been digitised, and as long as the process is calibrated regularly, prints can be run off on demand with no reduction in quality. No longer do artists have to pay out up front for a complete print run of the whole edition, making the whole procedure of limited edition prints much more cost-effective.

¹ Harrap’s Concise French and English Dictionary

But that is the same as printing on my inkjet printer from my home computer, isn’t it?

Well, yes and no. The technology has grown from the same basis, though a Giclée printer is capable of a much higher resolution than the average home printer, and has at least six different ink cartridges instead of just two. Selecting the right printer capable of such high quality, with a tested and proven combination of inks and media, is only part of the solution. Every piece of equipment in the process needs to be calibrated and matched, and each batch of media needs to be checked for colour variations.

People claim that Giclée prints can last for decades, but how can they when the technology is so new?

There is a lot of waffle on the web about the longevity of prints, both overly optimistic and overly cynical. No, the Giclée process hasn’t been around for very long, and inks and media are being improved all the time. But the tests for resistance to fading – or colour-fastness – have been around for a long time.

One measure for colour-fastness is the Blue Wool scale, which was originally developed for textiles, has been a British Standard for decades, and has been adopted by the automotive, paint and commercial printing industries. The Blue Wool Scale consists of samples of Blue Wool dyed with various dyes and exposed to harsh lighting conditions. The highest rating is 8, which is considered to be permanent.

Unlike lithographs and serigraphs, Giclées have undergone extensive, third-party fade-testing. Giclée prints achieve a minimum of 6 on the Blue Wool scale, which is equivalent to 25 years without noticeable fade. These estimates are based on laboratory simulations of aging.

How do Giclée prints differ from lithographs and serigraphs?

Offset lithographs are created by taking a continuous tone image and processing it through a screen. The result is an image created with a series of dots, each one proportional in size to the density of the original at the location of that dot. The human eye is therefore tricked into seeing something that looks like a continuous tone. Most printed material such as newspapers and magazines use this process.

Serigraphs are really screen prints. These prints are made by creating a set of screens, each representing one colour. Ink is then squeezed through the screen and onto the media. For fine art reproduction purposes, typically from 20 to more than 100 screens are required to approximate the continuous tone of the original. The larger the number of screens, the closer a serigraph can appear to be continuous tone and the more expensive it is to produce.

Giclée prints have many advantages over both the offset lithograph and the serigraph. The colour available for Giclée processing is limited only by the colour gamut of the inks themselves. Therefore, literally millions of colours are available and the limitation imposed by the screening process does not exist.

The Giclée process uses such small dots and so many of them that they are not discernible to the eye. A Giclée print is essentially a continuous tone print showing every colour and tonal nuance.

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