What is a geglee print?

[Don Diego]

This may sound stupid but I would like to know what is a geglee print and how is made? Characteristics, paper etc.
Thank you,
Don

[Peter Mounier]

The term is giclee.
Lots of google hits.
Basically it's an ink jet print print made with archival pigment inks, on archival quality paper.

Peter

[venchka]

Giclee perhaps?

A fancy way of saying inkjet print. Invented by art gallery owners who wanted to impress their clients.

[Don Diego]

So it apply to both color and black and white. I thought it was only for B&W prints.
Thank you,
Don

[Peter Mounier]

It's definitely for both color and B&W. I think it was used for reproducing paintings before it was used for B&W photo printing because a more recent evolution has been the developing of good neutral gray tone inks. Before that, photographers were printing B&W by mixing color inks. The prints weren't very good. Giclee printing has been around for about 10 years (I'm guessing), but B&W printing with dedicated gray and black inksets on ink jet printers is only a few years old.

Peter

[srbphoto]

From Wikipedia;

Giclée (pronounced /ʒiːˈkleɪ/ "zhee-clay" or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French [ʒiˈkle]) is an invented name (i.e. a neologism) for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclée" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray"[1]. It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne[2], a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial "Iris proofs" from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

The earliest prints to be called "Giclée" were created in the early 1990s on the Iris Graphics models 3024 and 3047 continuous inkjet printers (the company was later taken over by Scitex, now owned by Kodak). Iris printers were originally developed to produce prepress proofs from digital files for jobs where color matching was critical such as product containers and magazine publication. Their output was used to check what the colors would look like before mass production began. Much experimentation took place to try to adapt the Iris printer to the production of color-faithful, aesthetically pleasing reproductions of artwork. Early Iris prints were relatively fugitive and tended to show color degradation after only a few years. The use of newer inksets and printing substrates has extended the longevity and light fastness of Iris prints.

[wfwhitaker]

Derives from same root as "ejaculate".

[Jay Decker]

Derives from same root as "ejaculate".


Oh, that conjures a great mental image! I used to hate the term "giclee", but now I love it - giclee, it somehow adds a new dimension to my inkjet prints! :eek:

[Mark Sawyer]

Oh, that conjures a great mental image! I used to hate the term "giclee", but now I love it - giclee, it somehow adds a new dimension to my inkjet prints! :eek:

Well, photography is just another form of reproduction... :rolleyes:

[Alan Davenport]

"Giclee" is a French word that means a spray or a spurt of liquid. It probably comes from the French verb "gicler" meaning "to squirt."

As to the original question: giclee means "inkjet print" and the kind of paper is not relevant, although certainly nice papers are, well, nice. A giclee print is exactly the same as an inkjet print. You get to pay extra if the lab knows the fancy word.

[IanMazursky]

From Wikipedia;
Giclée (pronounced /ʒiːˈkleɪ/ "zhee-clay" or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French [ʒiˈkle]) is an invented name (i.e. a neologism) for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclée" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray"[1]. It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne[2], a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial "Iris proofs" from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

The earliest prints to be called "Giclée" were created in the early 1990s on the Iris Graphics models 3024 and 3047 continuous inkjet printers (the company was later taken over by Scitex, now owned by Kodak). Iris printers were originally developed to produce prepress proofs from digital files for jobs where color matching was critical such as product containers and magazine publication. Their output was used to check what the colors would look like before mass production began. Much experimentation took place to try to adapt the Iris printer to the production of color-faithful, aesthetically pleasing reproductions of artwork. Early Iris prints were relatively fugitive and tended to show color degradation after only a few years. The use of newer inksets and printing substrates has extended the longevity and light fastness of Iris prints.

I used to run an iris 3024 and own a 4Print (the relatively automated successor to the 3k series).
The quality was amazing even back then for such a simple device. They are continuous inkjet printers requiring a lot of maintenance.
At least an hour per day, but it was a labor of love. I had our 3024's registration dead on.

The Equipois inkset was made for giclee printing but you could use the GA inkset without a big problem.
I would have kept ours except for the cost. Its purging cycles would run through a full inkset in a month ($300-500).
Thats one of the reasons that iris prints were so expensive.
The cool thing about the 3k series is that if you could mount it on the drum, you could pretty much print on it.
We would go to an art store and buy any kind of uncoated fine art paper and they all came out great.
The iris didn't care or have sensors, it would even print without paper, which was a pain to clean up!

I do miss them a lot. The ink had a great smell to it and the prints popped. Even our epson 9880 prints cant have the same depth or look.
One other interesting thing about the iris inks on certain papers, with the right file and calibration, they could look almost metallic.

A few weeks ago i heard that Kodak (scitex bought iris, kodak bought scitex) had/is killing off all of the iris inks.
Thats really bad news because i know a lot of people who still have them. A number of very big printers, magazines and boutique shops.
They are all in deep as they have an entire workflow built around the iris's. Another sad day from Kodak but i guess i cant blame them.
It probably fell bellow the X$ mark for them.