Our Prints… What is a Giclèe Print?

The word Giclèe comes from the French verb gicler meaning “spray” or… possibly “nozzle” … or maybe something else!  There seem to be quite a few opinions on the subject!

Artists have traditionally used processes such as offset lithography or screen printing to reproduce fine art as prints.  These and other photomechanical processes require an awful lot of work to set up, very large presses and a lot of time so, large numbers of prints had to be produced to make the work worthwhile.  Giclèe printing has revolutionised the printing process for artists and collectors in terms of both the reprographic process and the quality and consistency of reproduction.

We’ve always been a little wary of having prints of Michael’s work produced for us in the past.  It was always very difficult to get prints produced to an exacting standard that did justice to be original paintings, that managed to capture the depth and richness of the colours and subtle details.  New imaging and scanning technology and the Giclèe printing process has allowed us to take the whole process “in house” so we can ensure each print is as true to the original painting as possible.

A Bit more detail on our process…

The first part of the process is to scan the artwork.  We use a very high resolution, large format “scan back” specifically designed for fine art reproduction (and used by many leading museums and art collections around the world!) and specially set up lighting.  This captures every minute detail of the original painting with outstanding clarity. To give you an idea of the amount of detail captured, a “professional” Digital SLR camera might typically have a maximum resolution of around 30 Megapixels.  Our scanner has a resolution of 216 Megapixels. 

This image file is transferred directly to a computer to be checked against the original on a colour calibrated monitor (it all gets rather technical!).  Once the scanned image meets approval, its ready for printing!   

We use a special, high definition large format Inkjet printer designed for fine art reproduction.  This is where that French verb “Gicler” comes in!  The printer has a twelve colour print head that “sprays” microscopic dots of pigment based ink onto the printing substrate (more on Inks and substrates in a moment!).  The twelve colour print head is capable of producing an incredibly wide tonal range and colour gamut in pin sharp detail.  Because it is a “spray” the printer is also ideal not only for smooth surfaces like papers but also those with a little texture, like canvas.