What is a Giclee Print?

Author: Eric Von Lehmden
Date: 09-28-2011

I cannot begin to tell you how many calls we get at Canvas Press asking us “What is a Giclée print?” Many artists that need prints of their paintings insist on having a quality print that is as precise and as colorful as the original art piece. Unfortunately, when using other types of printing such as screen or other mechanical devices, you tend to get a visible dot, mesh pattern that can easily be noticed. With a Giclée, you can get a print so clear and accurate, that you may mistake it for the original.

“Giclée” (zhee-clay) is a French term meaning to spray or spurt through a nozzle and can be traced back to 1991 and a man named Jack Duganne. Duganne was a print maker working at Nash Editions (owned by singer/songwriter Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills & Nash). He was looking for a name for a new type of printing they were producing with their IRIS printer (which was a large format high resolution industrial ink-jet printer that they “adapted” for fine art printing). When I say “adapted” I mean that Duganne and others sawed off portions of the ink cartridges so they could fit thicker mediums through the printer (watercolor and canvas). By doing this they voided the machine’s $126,000 warranty (1).

Color consistency and long term achievability are some of the leading attributes of a Giclée print. So much so that when giclée prints were first shown to art curators at museums they were worried and asked what they could do to let people know that these were not the originals (2). To be a true giclée, the artwork needs to be printed from a digital file onto canvas or watercolor paper. Giclée prints have been printed and stretched (on 1.5” wooded bars) giclées that have reached the awesome size of 54” x 130”. If you have a high enough quality digital file of your art or photograph, you will have more diversity in the size of giclée you are able to print onto canvas or watercolor paper.

Professional artists and photographers find it very advantageous to use giclée as a process to put their prints on canvas or fine art paper. The superior reproduction quality and amazing detail the print produces is the perfect option to selling their original paintings or using a photo lab for a large photo print. Artists are able to order a giclée one by one which is much more feasible then trying to mass produce a single painting and are able to digitally archive their work to use at a later time when an order is placed. Some artist may even do a slight embellishing to the giclee print using either touches of the original medium or a thick texturizing, clear gloss.

We have even come across artists that will use a professional camera to zoom in and photograph a particular section of one of their paintings to create a whole new piece of artwork that they can now print onto canvas using the giclée process. With the quality and technology of giclée prints, just about anyone can afford to test out their creative side by either try selling their new creation or use it in decorating their home. Overall, you will find giclées to be an affordable and reliable way to archive your artwork and save you on having to sell your precious one of a kind painting.

What is a Giclee Print?

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