Giclée Printing – what it’s all about
by Philip Alldrit
To put things into proper perspective, first we must take a step backwards in the timeline of developing print media technologies and processes. Initially it took a little while for the art-world community to concede that photography was a serious art medium that would make important artistic contributions with an intrinsic
investment value.
For those people who have looked at or purchased photographic fine art prints over the last decade or so, probably know all about “Silver Gelatin Prints”, which are Black & White photographs using silver-halide content in the base material. Silver gelatin photographic prints offered an important medium to the photographic fine art community; long lasting (resistant to fading), with good texture; choice to add Sepia Toning for that brownish monochrome look.
CibaChrome® printing, when introduced by Ilford, quickly became the photographic print choice for a unique rich color with excellent resistance to fading. CibaChrome® printing had such an impact on the photo community that new photo labs were born which specialized only this medium. Also, photographers who had darkroom facilities could purchase their own CibaChrome® processing drums and equipment and print their own color art pieces. CibaChrome® printing is a combination of special Ilford chemistry and a special photographic substrate that has been accepted over the years as gallery quality.
Then, as we moved into the digital age, and new ways of pre-press proofing were being explored that were more accurate in forecasting offset printing press results than the traditional “Color-Keys”, along came Iris™ with their high quality, digital, full color print/proofs. The fine art community soon welcomed Iris™ prints as a medium. I suppose the Iris™ print was a forerunner to the Giclée print, in that, an ink jet printing machine, although an extremely expensive one, was used to spray ink onto the a paper substrate to produce press-proofs, giving excellent results in terms of color, that closely represented what you might expect from the final print press run. Digital artists quickly recognized the beautiful color rendition and started using the Iris™ prints for display purposes.
Ink Jet printing and color laser printing have been improving steadily over the past ten years. Ink jet printers filling the needs for good quantity one-off prints and laser printers with their lower running costs and fast engines, filling the needs for short-run catalog pages, lyers and such like. Because ink jet printing machines have printing heads that slide back and forth on a rail as they spray ink, manufactures such as Epson – who cut their digital teeth in the early days with the Dot-Matrix printers – started to build extended printing devices that could handle extremely wide substrates for large displays, such as those used in conventions and trade shows.
So what is a Giclée print? Giclée, pronounced ZeeCLAY a French word meaning spray or squirt, is being coined as the process of using advanced ink jet printing technology along with multiple printing heads, archival inks, and fine-art materials to produce prints that exhibit the finest quality available, with longevity projections for as many as 120 years.
Now it is important to note that It’s not just the printing machine that qualifies a Giclée print; but a combination of assets, which include: multiple printing heads (7 or more) for tonal accuracy with continuous tone coverage and extended image definition; archival inks such as UltraChrome™ which yield an extended color gamut beyond the range of four-color lithographs, rivaling traditional silver-halide and gelatin printing processes in image quality. Choices in medium, such as: acid-free, fine-art gallery quality paper, smooth or textured, or even specialty substrates such as canvas and silk keep moving the bench mark for quality reproduction even higher.
Giclée printing fills a need that has been created through the advent of advanced technologies i.e. powerful personal computers, high resolution film scanners; graphic and photo editing software programs such as PhotoShop®, and of course high resolution digital camera’s.
Digital artists and photographers now have a medium that allows them to produce high resolution, archival prints, directly of their work, without traversing back to older forms of print display. As we move forward there will be other advances in print technologies, giving us more tools to work with, but I believe, Giclée printing will be leave its mark, and Giclée will take its rightful place in art galleries around the world.
Philip Alldrit is principal photographer at Alldrit Studios, Inc., a commercial photography studio. Also, Philip is creator and webmaster of Garden Stock Photography a web site designed to offer Royalty Free and Rights Managed gardening stock pictures to those who are involved in producing garden related materials. web address: http://www.alldrit.com