Fine Art Giclee Printing & Fine Art Documentation Studio

The term “Giclee” (English = “a squirt” or “fine spray”)  was coined in 1992 by one of the print makers at Nash Editions in California, a French-American by the name of Jacque Duganne. Nash Editions is a fine art print studio started by Graham Nash of the music group Crosby, Stills and Nash (later plus Neil Young). Nash was an avid photographer who wanted to use an early professional inkjet printer called IRIS Inkjet (which had been designed for accurate prepress proofing in commercial printing by IRIS Graphic Systems) for the purpose of printing editions of his own photographic work as well as fine art printing.

So called “standard prints” are printed using dye based inks which fade easily and relatively quickly. They are usually printed on common, resin coated,  plastic papers which contain high levels of optical brightening agents (OBAs). Conversely, a Giclee is a print made with pigment based inks which can last for hundreds of years before even beginning to fade. They are printed on cotton or high alpha-cellulose (purified wood fibre) based papers which can also last for hundreds of years before deterioration begins depending upon how they’re stored or displayed.

We use 12 colour, pigment inks for prints on Canvas and on fine papers. Canvas prints must be applied to a stretcher frame after which they can be hung. Protective coatings can be applied to the canvas prints to provide protection from UV (Ultra-violet) radiation and the effects of atmospheric pollutants. Prints on fine papers can be framed in conventional frames under anti-reflective glass (i.e. ArtGlass or Museum Glass) for protection from UV (Ultra-violet) radiation and the effects of atmospheric pollutants.

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In terms of the texture component of various canvas products some have a more coarse weave while others have a rather tight weave. Some are a mix or polyester and cotton. Others are more polyester. But, all things considered, they are quite similar. 

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On the other hand, fine art papers offer a wide range of textures which can be very coarse, random textures or more uniform textures; they can be rough or mild or extremely smooth i.e. no texture at all. Also the whiteness of the papers can vary from warmer to brighter white, etc.

Pigment inks which are used to make fine art “Giclee” prints are much more expensive than dye based inks which are used to make standard prints; Fine art, cotton and high alpha-cellulose (purified wood fibre) papers are much more expensive than the papers used for standard prints. Fine art papers are made at 500 year old mills in Germany, France, England, Japan and Italy at mills such as Hahnemuhle, Canson, Ilford, Arches, Fabriano, MOAB, Awagami etc.; The process of creating fine art prints requires the finest, multi-colour, pigment inkjet printers which are operated by people with decades of experience who must calibrate and operate these printers to achieve extraordinary results in print. Finally, all fine art “Giclee”prints are packaged with acid free interleave sheets in portfolio folders or between cardboard sheets for their protection.

Dye based inks fade relatively quickly. Pigment based inks can last for hundreds of years before even beginning to fade.

Certainly NOT Jpeg! The Jpeg format is quite fine for the internet but NOT for fine art printing. The Jpeg format is “lossy” which means that the process through which they are made discards image data for the sole purpose of making the file size much smaller. They are only 8 bit files which are preprocessed in the camera before they are even brought into Photoshop or Lightroom. They do not support either 16 bit or the ProPhoto RGB colour space.

Conversely, Tiff files which had been generated from Adobe Camera Raw files do not discard any image data and when they are kept in the ProPhotoRGB colour space as they are in Adobe Lightroom Classic, for example, they retain every nuance of colour and tone data which had been captured by the camera. Also, they can be 16 bit which is required to support ProPhoto RGB (the largest colour space which provides the smoothest tonal distribution and the greatest number of printable colours). Tiff files are the files from which fine art prints are made – NOT Jpegs.

All that said,  Jpeg files can be printed if you or your photographer do not have the ability to produce a Tiff from the camera RAW file. Another issue with Jpegs is that if one opens a Jpeg, changes it and resaves it, more data is discarded. When this is done over and over a few times, serious artefacts begin to infect the image quite noticeably.

If  a photographer is worth their salt, they should shoot in RAW format and should be able to generate a 16 bit Tiff in ProPhotoRGB from their camera RAW file. If they have a problem with ProPhotoRGB (which respects all camera captured data) then Adobe RGB is also acceptable or DCI-P3 which is more of a video colour space but is equally as large as Adobe RGB in terms of its colour gamut i.e. the range of colours that it can encompass. Jpegs only support sRGB (Standard RGB) or Adobe RGB in 8 bit.

At the end of the day, a Jpeg which has never been opened and resaved or really any Jpeg can be printed and it may seem to yield an acceptable result in print. Pedestrian “photo labs” like Costco or Walmart or Blacks and many others print from Jpegs all the time. The thing is, you won’t have a better print from a better file to compare it with. In short, making a print from a Jpeg on fine paper and framing it behind Museum or Artglass is like putting lipstick on a pig.

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If there is any Ultraviolet (UV) content in the source illumination, Optical Brightening Agents (OBAs) reflect it in the blue region of the visible spectrum. This makes whites appear to glow brighter. They only do this when there is a presence of ultraviolet illumination which of course exists in sunlight. Otherwise, OBAs will not fluoresce i.e. they won’t reflect any blue. So, if you have a white surface, for example, paper which had been treated with OBA dyes the white of the paper will appear to our eyes to be brighter and perhaps cleaner because it is imperceptibly bluer. In fact, this is why OBAs are added to most laundry detergents to make our socks and undies appear cleaner after a wash. As mentioned above, this only works where the main illumination contains an ultraviolet content.

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One problem with OBAs is that they fade. Because they are dyes, they fade rather quickly. Some fine art papers contain OBAs. But we do not consider these true, fine art, Giclee worthy papers since they begin to deteriorate rather quickly in terms of their OBA content. The manufacturers of papers with OBAs have said that we should not be concerned because once the OBAs fade, the paper will appear warmer like a similar paper which had no OBA content from the start. However, to the contrary, tests have shown that when OBAs fade, they do so in a blotchy or uneven manner. That is, they will fade here and there over the print such that under any light which has UV content portions of the print will appear warmer than other parts where the OBAs have not yet faded to the same degree.

Prints made on papers with OBAs only look brighter when the illumination under which they are viewed has some Ultraviolet content such as sunlight or light from an overhead skylight etc. But, if instead of framing with regular glass, one frames their print with Artglass or Museum glass which has 70% to 99% UV protection, the dye based OBAs will no longer fade. BUT, they will also no longer able to fluoresce. In other words, their entire purpose will be negated by that UV protective glass. Hence, this negates any purpose in selecting a paper with OBA content in the first place.