Giclée is a French word meaning spraying of ink. The prints are printed using dye base or pigment based inks on archival papers. The archival papers are acid free 100% cotton, all rag paper.

Major Museums and galleries showing giclées include:

Metropolitan Museum, New York
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Corcoran Gallery
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The British Museum

What is the quality of the Giclée reproduction method?

Giclees are one of the finest reproduction methods available today. The depth of color far surpasses that of lithographs. Lithographs use the same process as printing a magazine. Pigment based inks are superior in archival quality than dye based inks (dye fades quickly)

Genesis Giclée uses Pigment based archival inks printed on a Roland HiFi six-color printer. Lithographs are generally printed on paper made from a mix of rag and pulp. Also litho inks have dyes in them that are subject fading. When an lithograph is printed on a rag paper the colors are lifeless and dull because much of the ink is absorbed into the paper. The "dot gain" causes the printed dot to expand into the adjoining dot, this muddies the color.

A water color artist fights this when an opposite color will contaminate a color he is laying on his paper. To counter this problem printers may print on pulp made papers that have a coating. The coating minimizes the dot gain, but the acid in the paper yellows and attacks the ink over time.The 310 gram Giclee paper we use is much more substantial than lithograph prints.

Digital Scanning and proofing allows for better color fidelity on a Giclee than lithographs. A proof can be printed in minutes on a Giclee printer but a color proof on a litho takes a day and hundreds of dollars for one proof. With a digital proofing you can isolate an object in the print, color correct and run a small proof in minutes. The artist can see the results of the corrections almost immediately.

Check out the large selection of Giclees in the art section of this website!