FINE ART REPRODUCTIONS

The technology is known as Giclée. As Mike Winpenny at Cornerstone Graphic Technologies explains, Giclée- pronounced zheeklay- comes from the French word Gicler, which means a spray or a spurt of liquid.

The term Giclée print is an elevation in printmaking technology, in which images are generated from high resolution digital scans and printed with archival quality inks onto various substrates including canvas, fine art paper and photo-based paper. The Giclée printing process provides better color accuracy than offset printing processes. Giclée prints are typically created using professional 11-Color ink-jet printers. These modern technology printers can produce incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets. Giclée prints are sometimes mistakenly referred to as Iris prints, which are 4-Color ink-jet prints from a printer pioneered in the late 1970s by Iris Graphics. But these 11-Color ink-jet printers let the color gamut far exceed the standard 4-Color offset or inkjet printing capability.

The quality of the Giclée print rivals traditional silver-halide and gelatin printing processes. Giclée prints are commonly found in museums, art galleries, and photographic galleries. They look strikingly like the originals. For artists and art-lovers, Giclée prints are a wonderful advantage, especially when it is not feasible to mass produce a work of art. Artists can reproduce their art as needed or ondemand.

Once an image is digitally archived, additional reproductions can be made with minimal effort and reasonable cost. The prohibitive up-front cost of mass production for an edition is eliminated. Archived files will not deteriorate in quality as negatives and film inherently do. Another tremendous advantage of Giclée printing is that digital images can be reproduced to almost any size and onto various media, giving the artist the ability to customize prints for a specific client.

Cornerstone will get together with you again and evaluate color. Color adjustments will be made, if needed, no matter how many times, until you are satisfied as compared to the original.

“Should you not be satisfied with the reproduction, and we cannot color correct to satisfy you, there will be no invoice generated,” says Mike, adding that this has never happened in 27 years of business. “Once color is approved, prints can be made at reasonable costs going forward and as needed.”