Giclée (pronounced “jhee-clay”) is a French word meaning “spurting ink”. A giclée is a high resolution digital print and is a recognized fine art print category like lithographs and serigraphs.
Giclée is considered the world’s best technique for reproducing original works of art and for printing digitally created art and fine art photography.
A giclée is often produced on canvas or a high quality rag paper like watercolor paper with an archival ink. Giclée art is very stable, and resistant to fading and color shifts. Estimates of longevity for giclée prints is usually around 100 years with proper care.
The Process : Giclée prints are created typically using professional 8-Color to 12-Color ink-jet printers. Among the manufacturers of these printers are vanguards such as Epson, MacDermid Colorspan, & Hewlett-Packard. These modern technology printers are capable of producing incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets. Giclée prints are sometimes mistakenly referred to as Iris prints, which are 4-Color ink-jet prints from a printer pioneered in the late 1970s by Iris Graphics
The Advantages : Giclée prints are advantageous to artists who do not find it feasible to mass produce their work, but want to reproduce their art as needed, or on-demand. Once an image is digitally archived, additional reproductions can be made with minimal effort and reasonable cost. The prohibitive up-front cost of mass production for an edition is eliminated. Archived files will not deteriorate in quality as negatives and film inherently do. Another tremendous advantage of giclée printing is that digital images can be reproduced to almost any size and onto various media, giving the artist the ability to customize prints for a specific client
Canvas prints (Giclées) do not need to be framed with protective glass so the image can be seen clearly without bothersome glares. Canvas prints (Giclée) are tougher and far more durable than paper prints.