Giclée prints

What's in a name? Giclée, fine art inkjet, and digital print are all used today to represent the modern process of creating museum-quality archival prints on fine art substrates with pigmented inks using a very high quality large-format printer.

The term giclée print was introduced by Jack Duganne in 1991 to differentiate his beautifully crafted prints made using new digital technology from prints made on commercial and consumer inkjet printers.

Today, giclée prints are well accepted in galleries, museums, and private collections. The growth in the market for giclée prints has made them a highly collectible and established medium in the fine-art community. Giclée prints have higher resolution and richer colour in comparison with lithography and are replacing the traditional methods of lithography and screen-printing for fine art.

At Dragonfly Imaging & Printing, we find many artists have become comfortable with digital technologies and have returned to using illustrative terms such as fine art inkjet print and digital print.

Choosing A Substrate

Hardware and software have evolved to give printmakers the ability to produce vivid archival prints on a wide variety of papers and canvas.

The choice of substrate will produce a beautiful painterly quality or a crisp detailed interpretation depending on the artist’s needs.

All watercolour papers are 100% cotton, mould-made, acid-free, lignin-free papers. Our most popular watercolour paper is Arches Infinity. Arches Infinity Museum Quality Digital Fine Art Paper by Harald Johnson & Andrew Darlow is a good review of this paper.

Infinity and Somerset Enhanced have a proprietary inkjet coating, whereas Aquarelle and Somerset Velvet are uncoated. They are available in white and natural, smooth and textured, sheets and rolls.

PremierArt and Legion Canvas have incredible colour rendition, outstanding resolution, and are pliable enough to withstand stretching without cracking. Their glossy or matte surfaces and subtle texture are ideal for fine art printing with the finest image quality.

Limited & Open Editions

A print edition is a set of multiple copies of the same image. There are two types of editions—limited and open. In a limited edition, a fixed number of copies is produced with the understanding that no further copies will be produced later. Limited print editions are traditionally signed, numbered, and titled by the artist. The number indicates the unique impression and the total edition size (for instance “3/50” would be the third print in an edition of fifty).

An open edition has no pre-determined quantity, and is not necessarily numbered. For more information, read Discussion of Limited Editions for the Fine Art Photographer by Brooks Jensen.

Print Resolution

We recommend the appropriate resolution for printing your files with us on our page on file preparation. If you are interested in a theoretical discussion, the article, Understanding Resolution at Luminous Landscape, is a good read.

Converting Colour to B&W

Open the image in your editing program and have a look at the three channels (red, green, blue) to see what information is in each one. Usually one or two have most of the information you find appealing for your conversion to grayscale.

Then use the channel mixer, preferably in a layer. Click monochrome and adjust the sliders for your aesthetic, remembering which channels have what information. It will make sense when you try it. Every image will be different. When you are done the image is still in RGB mode, but you can see a beautiful B&W image on your monitor.

Convert to grayscale and send to the printer. This method allows you to create a beautiful custom grayscale conversion. Much software will just use the red channel and toss the blue and green rather than making a perfect balance.

Print Permanence

The inks and media we have chosen are properly matched and will last from 70 to more than 200 years under continuous lighting conditions, far outlasting conventional printing methodologies.

Wilhelm Research is the most respected researcher into longevity. Epson 9600 and 9800 Print Permanence Ratings, published by Wilhelm Research, can be downloaded as a pdf file.

The printer resolution that we use is 1440 lines per inch (lpi) or 2880 lpi depending on your image and media being used for the final print. We NEVER print on “high speed” at 720 lpi. There are visible differences in quality between 720 lpi and 1440 lpi.

For more information, read Print Permanence Information from Wilhelm Imaging Research.

Colour & Design

The following articles are favourites: