LIMITED EDITION PRINTS

What is a Giclee?

A Giclee is a widely recognized form of Fine-Art reproduction, known for it’s color accuracy, detail, and archivality. While using a technology related to ink-jet printing, a true Giclee is a great deal more than a very good ink-jet print. Giclees were originally developed as a pre-press proofing tool for traditional offset lithography, but as technology improved, it became apparent that the presses were having trouble delivering the quality and color range (or ‘gamut’) of the Giclees. Technology has continued to advance, and today artists all over the world have come to rely on this medium to faithfully reproduce their vision, and make their work available to a wider audience.

Giclees can be made on a variety of special papers and canvases, which are made to be acid, lignin, and optical-brightener free. The inks used are pigment based (rather than the dye based inks used in most ink-jet printers), and U.V. protected. The combination of pigmented inks with archival papers and canvases ensure prints that will not change color or fade over a period of many decades.

Most Giclees are made using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) inks, which are sprayed at very high resolution onto the paper or canvas. Most sophisticated printers have cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, and two black inks. All the colors reproduced come from these four basic colors, and the ‘dots’ of ink are so small (less than 100th of the size of high quality lithography) that the resulting print is close to constant tone.

We choose to have our Giclees produced by Photographic Works in Tucson, utilizing their state-of-the art Epson system utilizing ErgoSoft’s Studio Print RIP.

Working closely with the technicians in all aspects of the process, we can be sure that these prints, on Crane Museo Silver Rag paper are unsurpassed in quality, and will please the most discerning eye.