A Brief History of Giclee, Giclee Printing, Giclee Prints, Giclee Inks.

WHAT IS A GICLEE PRINT?
Contrary to what you may have heard, "Giclee" is not a trademark, nor a brand. It is a word dervied from the French, "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray". Today it is in common usage worldwide and refers to an art print made by the spray of ink from a very highly specialized large format inkjet printer.

The Iris printer by a company named Scitex was the first to be widely used in making museum quality art prints, but nobody "owns" the name Giclee.

The Giclee Print is produced by a process that has revolutionized the printmaking world. Giclee printing is the most popular choice in digital printing or fine art reproduction today.

ADVANTAGES FOR ARTISTS and PHOTOGRAPHERS
Giclee prints are made by artists and photographers alike. Giclee printers create
high quality art prints, as needed, in runs as small as 1 Giclee Print at a time.
Giclee Prints can be made without the "make ready" or setup costs historically
required by earlier fine art reproduction methods such as lithography or serigraphy.
There is no need for mechanical color separations or metal printing plates.

HISTORY OF GICLEE PRINTING
Long before the word Giclee was first used to refer to art prints, there were artists
who discovered that ink-jet printers provided options not available from other
print making processes.

As early as the 1980's, printing pioneers by the names of Graham Nash and Jon
Cone combined high quality Iris ink-jet printers with special "archival" inks of their
own invention that were intended to create prints that would have wonderful color
and the stability to resist fading over time. By the early 1990's another pioneer,
Jack Duganne popularized the word 'giclée' to describe the result of printing with
these special machines and inks that came from a technology used for commercial
printing in a process called "pre-press" proofing.

Rapid improvement in technology followed until the Giclee Printers Association (GPA)
was formed in 2001. The GPA set distinct standards for the term "Tru Giclee" and
supply a logo to deserving materials and products to help separate the word Giclee
from lower quality inkjet prints.

While there are some devotees who feel that only an "Iris" brand printer can create a
true Giclee print, this is just not so. In recent years, printers by HP, Epson, and Canon
have been developed to serve this market, and they far exceed the performance of
the original Iris printers.

THE TECHNIQUE
The art being printed can originate as digital or computer art, or it can originate as
a fine art piece. Fine art can be scanned from photos of the original, or if the original
is not too large, it can be scanned directly on a flatbed or drum scanner.

Once the art is imported to a computer, it may need to be color corrected so that the
the final printed Giclee work has the same colors as the original. It's not that the art
needs correction, but that the computer file needs corrected so that it will produce a
satisfactory Giclee print.

The printing of a Giclee takes place when the spray of ink from a special breed of
large format inkjet printer using very special "archival" inks is directed at the chosen
media. This media can be paper, canvas, leather or any number of films or fabrics.
These special inks will remain colorfast for 50 to 100 years or more.

Together, in the hands of a skilled technician, these printers and inks are able to
reproduce colors and shades, and print on various media, faithfully enough to
produce prints that appear to have the subtleties of continuous tone found in fine
art. A carefully trained operator can adjust the ink output to render colors faithfully
on various media.

THE GREAT DEBATE:
There is a fairly ferocious and very real debate in some circles as to whether or not
this is really "ART". After all, what can a computer know about "ART"?

To be fair, the first Giclee printers were not nearly as good as the Giclee printers in
use today. The quality of artistic reproduction was not at first the equal of fine art.
This may have contributed to the disagreement and slow adoption by the art world.

In the beginning, scanned art files required extensive color adjustments and
much trial and error before a print could be made. For this reason the Giclee
print was very expensive at first. In time, with color management schemes and
calibration schemes that match monitors and printers of the artist and the printer
it became possible for a giclee printer, under the control of a highly skilled operator
to provide high quality art prints at fairly reasonable prices.

Today, most agree, that in the same way that a lithograph can be a limited edition
print, and still be considered "ART" a Giclee print can be an "ART PRINT" that is
just as collectible as any limited edition print.

Further, it is useful to note that there are some Giclee Prints that are actual
original artworks because they have never existed before. In this case, the art
is created on a computer. If only one of these is ever printed, using a Giclee Printer,
then the resulting work is very much a "one of a kind" and original work of art as
any other painting that is made using a brush as a tool for applying paint instead
of a printer nozzle. In this case the Giclee Printer was merely a tool in the hand of
the artist. This kind of art is sometimes called digital art, and is not a copy. It is every
bit as collectible and valuable as any original artwork.

Finally, some Giclee prints are "TOUCHED BY THE HAND" after they come out of
the printer. This means that they begin as digital prints, but are made original and
unique by the artist who completes the printers work with traditional brush strokes
or other techniques for applying paint. The shading may be enhanced, colors may
be added that are not otherwise available from the Giclee process, or entire
foreground, background, or details may be added to make the piece a truly unique
work of art. While some may dismiss these, it should be observed that even the
great masters often had students prepare their canvasses and even begin the
backgrounds so that they could concentrate on the subject and detail. These
works tend to be valued somewhere between the worth of an original and the worth
of a limited edition print.

THE LOSS OF SOUL?
Artists have long been averse to being copied - and objected to the idea about as
strenuously as primitive people object to having their photo taken. In both cases,
there is a fear of a "loss of the soul".

However, the Giclee process did make the idea of producing limited edition prints
available and affordable for artists all over the world. Prior to the advent of Giclee
the limited edition print required the making of four color separations and printing
plates. This former process was a very expensive process, costing as much as
several thousand dollars before the printing could even begin. Piece rates for the
older techniques may be lower per square foot, or per item, but the artist would
have to make AND SELL a lot of prints to recover the setup costs.

EMBRACING CHANGE
Now, the Giclee printing process has become quite good, with printers using
archival inks that will last at least 100 years, and printing on acid free papers,
or even art canvas as well as any number of substrates.. Today, most artists
and photographers have come to embrace the Giclee techology because it
makes limited edition prints more accessible and affordable. The public gets
"Real Art Prints" at affordable price levels. Artists can sell prints to those on a
budget and withhold originals until a fair price is met. This provides some relief
from the temptation to reduce prices to meet a market. This new price point
makes an especially good introduction to the collecting of art for those happy
folk who appreciate good art but cannot afford gallery prices for original works.
It makes art more accessible to those with more modest means than traditional
art collectors. It relieves the artist of the economic pressure to sell at a lower
price just to "make a living". Artists may also now sell the same serendipitious
conflagration of paint, ink, light, and time (an unusually nice painting or photo)
many times over instead of only once.

Now the artist is happy, and the public is happy too!

Copyright 2008 Lonn Dugan, BIG Marketing Solutions LLC - all rights reserved.
Permission is freely granted to quote this article so long as copyright, credit and
a link is included to www.eGiclee.com home page.

more information coming soon about Giclee Printing History.