Giclee Prints

Giclee (zhee-clay) is an individually produced, high-fidelity, high-resolution print made on a special large format printer. Giclees use high-end inkjet technology, which is far more sophisticated than your desktop printer.

The giclee process employs six colors including light cyan, cyan, light magenta, magenta, yellow and black. The colors are lightfast, pigmented inks, archival in quality and printed on archival, museum quality paper.

Giclee printers contain high-end print-heads resulting in a wider color gamut, and the ability to use various media to print on. The ink is sprayed onto the page by way of micron-sized dots, actually mixing the color on the page to create true shades and hues.

Giclee prints are priced midway between original art and traditionally-produced limited edition lithographs. Limited edition lithographic prints are usually produced in editions of 500-1000 or more and all at once. But, giclees rarely exceed 50-250 reproductions one at a time.

Lithography uses tiny impressions and only four inks including cyan, magenta, yellow and black to fool the eye into seeing various hues and shades. Colors are "created" by printing different size dots of these four colors. By looking closely or with a magnifying glass one can see a round rosette pattern that the four dots form. While giclees are produced directly from a digital file, lithographs involve generations of detail-diminishing negatives and printing plates. This lithographic process makes for a much smaller color gamut with much less resolution than with giclee printing.

Giclees were originally developed as a proofing system for lithograph printing. It soon became apparent, however, that the presses were having a hard time delivering the quality and color of the giclee proofs. Since then giclee prints have evolved into the new darlings of the art world. They are coveted by art collectors for their fidelity and quality. Giclees are also desired by galleries because they don't have to be produced in huge quantities with their large layout of capital and storage.

Many websites are now offering high end giclee prints so that fine art is accessible to everyone.