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Giclée printing is a method of fine art reproduction printing involving drum scanners, special inks, and a printing process similar to inkjet printing. Giclée, a French word that means “to spray or to squirt,” is pronounced “zhee clay.” The term was first used in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to digital fine art prints made using inkjet technology. Today, when an artist or gallery owner refers to giclée prints, she is referring to high quality, inkjet-based fine art digital prints created using lightfast, archival inks, and CMYK color processes.

Early Giclée Printing

The first giclée prints were used as prepress proofs, not final finished digital art reproductions. These proofs were printed on Iris Graphics printers (Iris Graphics has since been acquired Scitex which is now owned by Hewlett Packard) and used to ensure color matching before final production. While these early giclée proofs were fine for the prepress proofing process, their inks degraded rapidly which made them a poor choice for long-term fine art reproduction.

Fortunately, giclée printing evolved. Improvements were made to the inks used and additional printing substrates were added, allowing for improved, archival quality longevity and a variety of finishing options. As giclée printing evolved, fine artists began to see the value of this method of fine art reproduction. Not only had the printing process improved the longevity of the prints, the colors, hues, and tones had remained true to the original. In addition, giclée prints could be printed on many different types of medium including canvas, watercolor paper, fine art paper, and photo-based paper.

Modern Giclée Printing

Today, giclée printing involves high resolution scanning of original two dimensional fine art pieces such as oil paintings, watercolor paintings, and photographs. Giclée prints are printed by massive inkjet printers using 8-color or 12-color printing processes. This results in high quality fine art reproductions with results on par with silver-halide and gelatin prints.

Giclée printing has become a form of “on demand” fine art reproduction because once the artwork has been scanned and digitized, digital prints can be made at any time. Just as a personal computer user can send a digital photo to an inkjet printer as needed, so too can a professional giclée printing company send the digital file to a giclée printer. Artists and photographers have the option to either mass produce prints or create signed, limited edition runs.

Giclée printing has evolved from its early roots as a prepress proofing tool to a high quality fine art reproduction method.