To those not familiar with giclee, the term refers to high quality inkjet printing done on materials such as canvas and watercolor papers. Giclee, pronounced zhee-clay, is the choice of many world famous artists and photographers. Giclee prints are displayed at the NY Metropolitan Museum and MOMA as well. Giclee prints from famous photographers have fetched over $10,000.
Can you make giclee prints at home? Technically yes if you are using a pigment based set of inks, fine art papers prepared for inkjet and a high quality desktop printer. In a past article I mentioned that cheap desktop printers are not capable of producing a true giclee. This said, there are some new mid level desktop printers that have the required quality.
The term giclee loosely means "sprayed on" in French. It refers to the injket nozzles spraying inks on papers. It was coined in California by digital imaging professionals who saw the potential of their printers to reproduce more than just proofs.
With the advent of digital photography and the art buyers' desire to purchase high quality prints on real artist substrates, giclee is becoming very popular. Many portrait photographers now offer pictures on canvas and textured watercolor paper.
If you are into photography, scrapbooking or just want to create interesting postcards, you will find many of the art materials we use professionally available on the internet in cut sheets. The cost is higher than regular inkjet photo paper but the results will be well worth the extra cost.
If you plan to print or have a professional shop print your work, make sure archival inks and papers are used. The coatings and substrates have to be acid free and possibly be without optical brighteners.
Print this page