Giclee is the Most Important Printing Process Development to Reproduce Visual Art.Giclee is indeed the most important printing development of the Twentieth Century. These printers can print on different strata, including on canvas. They have the ability to reproduce original images with astounding accuracy. When reproducing original paintings on canvas, it often takes a trained eye to differentiate between copy and original. The technique is based on the inkjet principle but it is far more advanced and sophisticated. It uses eight colors and nozzles to print and is capable of spraying four million microscopic droplets of ink per second. The ink droplets move through the nozzles at a speed of sixty miles per hour. The inks are all water-based which makes the printing process non-toxic and environmentally safe. Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay") is a French word meaning "to squirt" or "to spray” which is of course how the inkjet printer works. It squirts ink as it prints. The name was coined in 1991 to give the process a marketing name. It is now the accepted name by traditional visual artists, museums and collectors. Regrettably, no official or legal standards have been laid down for this duplicating and printing process. Giclee Fine Art printmaking is supposed to mean that an image was scanned on a professional scanner. It is then digitally manipulated for perfection with Photoshop and Paintshop software. Finally, the image is printed on a special Fine Art printer like the Epson Stylus Pro 9600 Printer, using their special UltraChrome inks. But for the hardware and software to work perfectly it requires above all a dedicated, perfectionist operator or print maker. Someone who is first of all interested in art, in producing a perfect print and only secondly in money. It is no wonder then that some professional Giclee print makers claim that they do not REPLICATE Fine Art, but that they are able to create “multiple originals”. Unfortunately, many reproduced images are recently being offered for sale on the Internet as Giclee prints while these are actually more precisely classified as simple paper or canvas Xerox copies. When everything is called “a Giclee print”, the term will loose meaning and value. We will not be surprised at all, therefore, to see the creative artists community come up with a different name for this process in the not too distant future. Already we see professional print makers distancing themselves from other, assumed less-professional, printers by forming their own groups and using different terms for the process. Like “Tru Giclée”, “Tru Décor", "Heritage Giclée" or “UltraGiclee”. The latter is the name the Epson Company gives to the printing process that uses their scanners, printers and material. We like using the name “UltraGiclee” since we use professional Epson scanners and printers, their UltraChrome inks and canvasses. We now like to think of ourselves as “UltraGiclee Fine Art Print Makers” rather than Giclee printers. There is an excellent Web Site that will give you a good understanding of the History of Giclee and how this printing method developed. Log on to www.dpandi.com and read "What's in a name: The True Story of Giclée" and other articles. You’ll enjoy the views and opinions of genuine professional Print Makers on the subject of the Fine Art printing industry. Giclee is barely 15 years old and is thus really still in its infancy. Nevertheless, it has already created opportunities for many beneficiaries. Its benefits and beneficiaries are many as we will explore in following pages below.
Above is the Epson Stylus Pro 9600 Printer which together with the Epson Stylus Pro 7600 printer, are the favorites among Digital Fine Art Print Makers. They can print respectively up to 44” or 24” wide and, in theory, as long as needed. The color reproduction of these printers is just spectacular. The inks, under regular display conditions, are guaranteed to last for AT LEAST 100 years. Several other well-known companies also make superb Giclee printers. These new printers are capable of producing beautiful finished products truly fitting the definition of Digital Fine Art. No wonder then that this process is the preferred method for reproducing any image by museums, collectors, painters, photographers and other professionals involved with visual art. Please click on the following pages to read about Opportunities, Benefits and Beneficiaries created by this new process of producing Replicas. Do not overlook to read “A Word of Caution”.
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