What Is A Giclee?

Many of the limited edition prints are called Giclée and I often get asked what this means.

A Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay"), is the process of ink-jet printing for making large format fine art digital prints cost effectivley for limited print runs.

The term comes from from the French verb gicler (meaning "to squirt, to spray") and was first used in commercial printing in the early 1990's as a way to preview what a print would look like before it was printed on a press.

The term, sometimes anglicised as giclee, is used to describe any high-resolution, large-format ink-jet printer output with fade-resistant dye or pigment-based inks. It is common for these printers to use between six and twelve colour inks and the use of dye based inks requires special coating to avoid fading.

The word giclée was coined by Jack Duganne to represent any digital print used as fine art. Its intent was to distinguish commercial digital prints from fine art prints. In much the same way that the word serigraph is used to denote a fine art silk screen print, the word giclée is to be used to denote a fine art digital print.

Though originally intended for proofing, many artists and photographers use ink-jet printers as an alternative to lithography, serigraphy or serilith for limited edition original prints or reproductions. The cost of producing limited edition runs is greatly reduced compared to alternative printing methods.

This article was adapted from Wikipedia